Scaling New Heights

Few Seattle University alums have reached the heights that Jim Whittaker did—literally.

On May 1, 1963, Whittaker, ’52, along with Sherpa Nawang Gombu, became the first American to summit Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak, cementing his place in mountaineering history.

A native of West Seattle, Whittaker along with his twin brother Lou, ’52, put their names on the mountaineering map early on, well before they enrolled at Seattle University. They began climbing at age 12, first summited Mount Rainier at 16 and by 18 had reached the top of all the major mountains in Washington.

Jim graduated from SU with a biology degree and three years post-graduation became the first full-time employee of REI, eventually becoming the company’s CEO.

Whittaker’s historic ascent was made as part of a team led by Norman Dyhrenfurth, who put together a collective of 19 climbers, 37 Sherpas and more than 900 porters. The team reached Everest Base Camp on March 21 and two days later one of the climbers was killed when he was buried by an ice fall. The group reached the South Col on April 16 and Whittaker and Gombu were the first summit-attempt team, making their final seven-hour push despite very windy conditions and a lack of available oxygen, reaching the top on May 1.

In a 2005 interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Whittaker said few people thought the group could reach the summit.

“I didn’t know what was happening below,” Whittaker told the publication. “Do you go up or down? All I knew was what I had to do. You were so committed, working for years on this, being halfway around the world. We wanted to summit so bad. You can see how people die.”

Whittaker’s fame in the mountaineering community took off. In 1965 he led Senator Robert Kennedy on the first ascent of Mount Kennedy in the Canadian Yukon and in 1990 he led the Mount Everest International Peace Climb on Earth Day, the first-time mountaineers from the United States, the Soviet Union and China climbed a mountain together.

Meanwhile, his brother Lou became an enormously successful mountaineering guide, summitting Mount Rainier more than 250 times, training generations of mountaineers and leading the first American ascent of the North Col of Mount Everest in 1984. Mountaineering stayed in the family, too, as Jim’s son Leif also went on to summit Everest.

Whittaker’s Everest fame led to a boom in business for REI, helping it become the hugely successful outdoor recreation company it is today. He retired from the company in 1979 but continued to excel in business, becoming a very popular public speaker and author of a successful autobiography.

In his interview with the Seattle P-I, Whittaker encouraged people to push themselves to their limit.

“It’s about making the most of every moment, about stretching your own boundaries, about being willing to learn constantly and putting yourself in situations where learning,” he said. “…Being out on the edge, with everything at risk, is where you learn—and grow—the most.”