Mountaineer taught many to ascend heights
SEATTLE — Lou Whittaker, an American mountaineer who helped lead ascents of Mount Everest, K2 and Denali, and who taught generations of climbers during his more than 250 trips up Mount Rainier, the tallest peak in Washington state, has died at 95.
RMI Expeditions, the guide company he founded in 1969, confirmed he died peacefully at home Sunday.
“Mountains were the source of his health, the wellspring of his confidence, and the stage for his triumphs, and he was one of the first to make mountaineering and its benefits accessible to the broader public,” the company said in statement posted to its website Wednesday. “His leadership made mountain guiding a true profession, with many of the world’s premier mountaineers benefiting from Lou’s tutelage.”
Whittaker and his twin brother Jim Whittaker — who in 1963 became the first American to summit Everest — grew up in Seattle and began climbing in the 1940s with the Boy Scouts. At 16, they summited 7,965-foot Mount Olympus, the highest peak in the Olympic Mountains west of Seattle, Jim Whittaker recounted in his memoir, A Life on the Edge. When they reached the town of Port Angeles on their way home, they found cars honking and people celebrating: World War II had ended.
They also began participating in mountain rescues — including the search for nine troops who had parachuted out of a military plane over Mount Rainier in a storm; all but one survived. Lou Whittaker saved dozens of lives during numerous rescue efforts over his career, RMI said.
In the early 1950s the brothers served in the Army’s Mountain and Cold Weather command at Camp Hale, Colo., where they trained an elite group of soldiers — the 10th Mountain Division — to execute wartime missions in unforgiving alpine conditions, according to a profile of the two by the Northwest outdoors nonprofit The Mountaineers.
When they returned from service, Jim Whittaker became the manager of the gear coop REI’s first store; he would go on to become its chief executive. Lou Whittaker began guiding people on climbs of Rainier, Denali and other peaks.
Lou Whittaker declined to join the Everest expedition that made his brother famous because he and a partner were planning to open a sporting goods store in Tacoma, Wash.