He trained generations of guides on Mount Rainier and led expeditions to Everest, Denali and Kangchenjunga, the world’s third-highest peak.
Lou Whittaker, center, with his sons Peter and Win on the summit of Mount Rainier in the early 1990s. Mr. Whittaker climbed the mountain more than 250 times and trained generations of guides on its slopes. Lou Whittaker, an elder statesman of American climbing who led pioneering expeditions to Mount Everest, started one of the country’s premier guide services and summited his own backyard peak, Mount Rainier, more than 250 times, died March 24 at his home in Ashford, Wash. He was 95.
“There’s a certain amount of risk involved in life,” he later said. “When it comes down to dying, I want to know what it is like to have really lived.”Early in his mountaineering career, Mr. Whittaker was virtually inseparable from his twin brother. The two men trained together, climbed together and were almost indistinguishable, although Mr. Whittaker was right-handed and was the more gregarious of the two.
Two years later, Mr. Whittaker returned and triumphed as a team leader, heading the first successful American expedition — and only the third overall — up the colder, north side of the mountain. Mr. Whittaker acknowledged that he had a false sense of invulnerability as a young man, which vanished following his brushes with avalanches, frostbite and other near-disasters. “Invariably, a novice climber will say to me, ‘I’m afraid of heights,’” he said. “I always reply, ‘I am too. That’s why I’m still around.’”Standing nearly 6½ feet tall, he and his brother earned basketball scholarships to Seattle University, although they spent more time on the slopes than the hardwood.
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