Lou Whittaker's Son Remembers the Legendary Mountaineer

The climbing world lost an icon this week when Lou Whittaker died on March 24 at the age of 95. Whittaker, who made a name for himself atop scores of the world’s highest peaks, passed away after a long battle with congestive heart failure, according to the Seattle Times.

Known both in his community and across the globe, Whittaker was a towering figure of mountaineering, both figuratively and literally—he was six foot five. His personal mountaineering resume was extensive, the born-and-raised Seattleite made more than 250 ascents of Mount Rainier and traveled the world leading ascents of Denali, K2, and Kanchenjunga, and others. Though he never climbed Everest himself, he led the 1984 American Mount Everest expedition that included the first successful American summit from the north side of the peak, completed by his twin brother Jim.

Whittaker founded Rainier Mountaineering Inc (RMI) in 1969 which has become one of the premier guiding operations in the nation. His son Peter now owns and operates the company. Outside spoke to Peter on March 28 about his father’s life and legacy. “Lou was most proud of introducing people to the mountains and taking them places where they would not be able to go on their own,” Peter Whittaker said. “He was a teacher, an instructor, a portal for people who would never have otherwise seen wonders like the inside of a crevasse—60 feet deep.”

Whittaker exposed his kids to the high peaks from a young age, guiding Peter to the summit of Rainier at the age of 12. “I cried on my first summit of Rainier with him. I was miserable, wearing cotton, long johns and jeans. It was a terrible experience,” said Whittaker. “But those early lessons ended up influencing me throughout my entire life, giving me the ability to dig deeper and do hard things.”

Peter Whittaker said his father Lou never pressured him to take up the mantle of becoming a mountaineering guide, “His size 13 boots were too big for me to fill anyway,” he said. Instead, he simply taught his children his philosophy of the mountains—how to listen to them and respect them, how to survive. “My dad used to say some days you eat the mountains and some days the mountains eat you.”

The Whittakers know that better than anyone. In 1981, Lou and Peter were involved in the worst mountaineering accident in American history. RMI was guiding a party of 22 people up the standard route on Mount Rainier when a massive icefall event occurred, killing 11 people, including one of the guides. Peter descended with the survivors to meet Lou, who was coordinating rescue efforts at the guide house near the Paradise parking area. Families of the clients had assembled to find out if their loved ones were safe, and when the wife of one of his clients who had died asked Peter if he was alright, Lou stepped in and comforted her. “That was the kind of person he was—he was a pillar of strength and support,” said Peter. Lou then went with his brother Jim to lead the recovery efforts, though the bodies were never found.

Lou Whittaker saved many lives over the decades he spent guiding on Rainier. Once, in the 1960s, a dentist and his two children went missing high on the peak during a storm. Navigating in the high alpine by map and compass, Lou Whittaker searched through 60-mile-per-hour winds and blowing snow to identify any outlying surface in the topography. Eventually he found a snow cave the dentist scraped together—the man had used his own body as a door to block the wind, and though he was dead when Whittaker arrived, his children miraculously survived. Whittaker was able to descend with them to safety.

Whittaker guided Rainier until he was 66 years old and skied his second home of Sun Valley, Idaho until he was 89. Whittaker believed “that health is like a bank.” “He made deposits in his youth by working hard and climbing and running for decades,” Peter said. “He’d filled his bank so well that he was able to make withdrawals long into life. That’s how he lived so long.”

Over his decades of work, Whittaker led more than 100,000 people on the flanks of Mount Rainier. Ex-clients would often approach him years later at trade shows and reintroduce themselves, saying “Hey Lou, I summitted with you back in ‘88!” Peter’s not sure he remembered most of them, but he always made them feel like part of his family. Whittaker had a gift for extracting maximum effort out of his clients and taking them far beyond what they believed their limits to be.

Lou and Jim Whittaker built the Rainier climbing culture Rainier from scratch. There were no outfitters anywhere near the mountain, so they took over a building and made their own store. There was nowhere to get a beer after a summit day, so they built Whittaker’s Bunkhouse bar and hotel to serve guests with more than 30 rooms. There was nowhere to throw a party after a successful trip, so Lou bought a 12-foot-by-six-foot barrel from a company that made pickles and built a hot tub that could hold 18 naked people during big celebrations.

“Rainier Lou” Whittaker was a larger-than-life figure, and his community will miss him. He leaves behind a wife, his twin brother Jim, two sons, and a legacy of service to the mountaineering community.