By James R. Hagerty

When Jim Whittaker was a rambunctious young boy in Seattle, his mother often ordered him and his twin brother to go outside and play, allowing her some peace. That proved to be excellent career advice.

Whittaker, who died April 7 at the age of 97, became the most celebrated American mountain climber of his era. His relentless pursuit of that hobby led to job opportunities -- first as a climbing guide and rescue leader, and later as the first full-time employee of Recreational Equipment, or REI, where he rose to chief executive and turned a tiny Seattle cooperative into a national chain selling gear for outdoor adventures.

The literal and figurative high point of his life came on May 1, 1963, when, gasping for breath and nearly frozen, the 6-foot-5 Whittaker planted an American flag in the ice atop Mount Everest, the world's tallest mountain at 29,000 feet, accompanied by a Sherpa, Nawang Gombu, who became a lifelong friend. He had trudged on even after another climber in the group died, crushed by crumbling chunks of glacial ice. Others lost toes or fingertips to frostbite.

Edmund Hillary of New Zealand, guided by Tenzing Norgay, had reached that summit first, a decade earlier. But Whittaker was the first American to climb Everest and became an instant celebrity, feted by John F. Kennedy at the White House and praised by the astronaut John Glenn, who quipped that, unlike the first Americans in space, Whittaker could say that a chimpanzee didn't precede him.

Whittaker and Gombu were the 10th and 11th people to reach the top, according to the Himalayan Database. Since then, more than 7,500 other people have achieved the feat, made much easier by better technology and luxury guide services.

Whittaker went on to lead Robert F. Kennedy to the top of Mount Kennedy (named to honor the slain President Kennedy) in the Canadian Yukon in 1965. He led the first successful American ascent of the world's second-highest mountain, K2, on the China-Pakistan border, in 1978, and three years later guided a team of handicapped people -- including blind and deaf individuals and a Vietnam veteran who had lost a leg -- to the top of Mount Rainier.

To promote international peace, he knocked down bureaucratic hurdles and cooled cultural clashes to herd a team of Russian, Chinese and American climbers to the summit of Everest in 1990.

"He was the face of mountain climbing for a generation," said Michael Levy, editor and publisher of Summit Journal, and his exploits inspired new generations. The American Alpine Club has grown to more than 26,000 members today from 582 in 1963, partly because membership requirements have eased but also reflecting wider interest in the sport. Climbing gyms have proliferated.

The value of fear

James Warren Whittaker was born on Feb. 10, 1929, in Seattle, 10 minutes before his identical twin brother, Louis. His father, Charles Whittaker, was a traveling salesman for a maker of burglar alarms and bank vaults. His mother, Hortense Elizabeth (Gant) Whittaker, managed the home, which looked out on the Olympic Mountains and Puget Sound. Even walking home from school involved steep climbs.

As Boy Scouts, the twins learned to survive in the wilderness, or at least subsist on oatmeal for two days as they did once after running out of other food. They took climbing courses from the Mountaineers Club of Seattle. In his memoir, "A Life on the Edge," Whittaker recalled feeling euphoria as a 16-year-old at the top of Mount Olympus in Washington state, 7,965-feet high, despite blisters on his heels. Within a few years, they were leading novices up Mount Rainier.

He learned to value fear. When he and his brother guided clients who confessed that they were scared of heights, he replied: "Good, you had better be. So are we, and that is why we are still alive."

With help from a basketball scholarship, he majored in biology at Seattle University, a Roman Catholic school. He was cut from the basketball team after breaking a rule against skiing, but managed to cover his college expenses by working part time at a sporting-goods store.

Drafted into the Army, he and his brother were so fit that they breezed through basic training. They then talked their way into an assignment in Colorado training Special Forces soldiers to ski and climb mountains, a job that spared them from being sent to fight in Korea.

A gamble with REI

In 1955, Whittaker received an offer to join REI, then a single 20-by-30-foot shop above the Green Apple Pie Restaurant in Seattle. Inventory had to be lugged up a flight of stairs. Members of the co-op mainly bought mountaineering equipment imported from Europe. His job included sweeping the floor and packaging mail orders. Joining a tiny organization was "sort of a gamble," he told The Wall Street Journal later, "but I thought what the heck."

Whittaker rose to chief executive of REI in 1971. Some of the directors opposed expansion of the business beyond Seattle, but he pushed successfully to open new stores in other states, and sales soared. REI now has 195 stores across the U.S.

Eventually, Whittaker found he was making far more money from his sideline of endorsing Vibram-soled boots than from his modest salary at REI. Tired of office work and politics, he retired from the retailing company in 1979.

He was grateful for all the time off REI had allowed for his climbing, including several months for his 1963 ascent of Everest, when he was part of a team organized by Norman Dyhrenfurth, a filmmaker. Some 900 porters were hired to carry supplies -- including food, scientific instruments, oxygen bottles and Rainier beer. The caravan looked like a mile-long millipede, Whittaker wrote.

By the eve of the final ascent, Whittaker's weight had dropped to 175 pounds from 200. The final meal before that climb consisted of freeze-dried crabmeat, tea and Jell-O. He and his Sherpa emerged from their tent into 50-mile-an-hour winds, a blizzard so fierce that Whittaker couldn't see his feet. For the next seven hours he staggered and crawled upward, at times needing five or six breaths for every step.

At the top, Whittaker wrote later, he felt frail and puny. There was no rush of euphoria. He simply hoped to find the strength to descend to an altitude with softer beds, more oxygen and higher temperatures. After a mere 20 minutes on top of the world, he began picking his way down.

Though six men from the expedition reached the summit, journalists put the spotlight on Whittaker as the first. President Kennedy sent him a telegram. Later, Whittaker and his family went on skiing and rafting trips with Robert and Ethel Kennedy and their children. In 1968, Whittaker helped Robert Kennedy campaign for president. After Kennedy's assassination, Whittaker was a pallbearer at the funeral in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.

Whittaker's celebrity and frequent travel strained his marriage to Blanche (Patterson) Whittaker, with whom he had three sons. They divorced in 1971. Two years later, he married Dianne Roberts, a Canadian who was nearly 20 years his junior and shared his taste for outdoor challenges.

With her and their two sons, Whittaker lived on a sailboat for four years in the late 1990s, traveling around the Pacific with stops in Tahiti, Fiji and Australia. After knee-replacement surgery in 2006, he managed to return to skiing and hiking.

His wife survives him, along with three of his five sons, three grandchildren and a great-granddaughter. His twin brother died in 2024. His son Leif Whittaker has climbed Everest twice.

As the CEO of a cooperative, Whittaker was never enriched by stock awards as the heads of publicly traded companies typically are. Still, he enjoyed another perk: his 30% lifetime discount on REI merchandise.

Write to reports@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 15, 2026 13:00 ET (17:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.