April 8 (UPI) -- Jim Whittaker, the first citizen of the United States to reach the top of Mount Everest, died at his home in Port Townsend, Wash., leaving a legacy of mountaineering and outdoorsmanship that stretched for decades both in the Northwest region and throughout the country.
His son Leif said he died Tuesday.
"Seldom do you have one person epitomize the most admired, treasured and inspiring value of a whole state," said Jay Inslee, former governor of Washington, in the Cascadia Daily News, "and that's what Jim Whittaker does."
On May 1, 1963, Whittaker and mountaineer Sherpa Nawang Gombu were the 10th and 11th climbers ever to reach the summit of Everest, 10 years after Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay did so. This was, however, only one point in the middle of Whittaker's long career in the outdoors.
"He didn't just arrive at the summit and then stay there forever as a shrine to his singular accomplishment," Melissa Arnot Reid, the first U.S. woman to reach the top of Everest without extra oxygen, told the Daily News about Whittaker. "One of the major impacts for me is this idea that no one accomplishment is like your arrival point in adventure. Adventure is the forever unfolding thing that we're always on."
