Education
Seattle University.
Seattle University.
He summited on May 1, 1963, with the Sherpa Nawang Gombu (a nephew of Tenzing Norgay). They ran out of oxygen but managed to reach the summit. Once there, Whittaker planted a United States flag at the top.
Whittaker graduated from West Seattle High School and Seattle University.
He was the first full-time employee of Recreational Equipment Incorporated. and was the company"s Chief Executive Officer in the 1960s. Now, Whittaker is chairman of the Board of Magellan Navigation, a company that produces handheld global positioning system (Global Positioning System) units.
In 1965 he guided Robert Kennedy up the newly named Mount He led the Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb that brought together climbers from the United States, Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics and China to summit Mount Everest. In addition to putting more than a dozen climbers on the summit, the expedition hauled off a large amount of trash left on the mountain by previous expeditions.
In 1999 Whittaker released his autobiography, A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond.
As a member of the American Mount Everest Expedition 1963 led by Norman Dyhrenfurth, he was the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest.