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.
FILE - Legendary Seattle mountain climbers twin brothers Jim, left, and Lou Whittaker celebrate their 80th birthday with a party at the Space Needle in Seattle, Tuesday Feb. 10, 2009. Lou Whittaker, a Seattle-born and -raised mountaineer and glacier travel guide who climbed Mount Rainier more than 250 times, died Sunday, March 24, 2024. He was 95.
To his brother’s dismay, Mr. Whittaker dropped out weeks before the expedition departed. In his 1994 memoir, “Lou Whittaker: Memoirs of a Mountain Guide,” he wrote that he felt “a growing sense of responsibility” to his wife and young children. He decided it would be better to stay behind and focus on a new business opportunity, a sporting goods store in Tacoma that he took over and christened Whittaker’s Chalet.
Mr. Whittaker didn’t personally reach the summit but noted that climbing a mountain like Everest was a team effort, in which an ascent by one was in some ways an ascent by all. He said he had no regrets about missing out on the peak; after all, he had gone as far as he could. Nor did he regret missing his brother’s signature climb in 1963. As a twin, he said, he shared in his brother’s victories, sometimes literally.
The siblings were joined on early climbs by their older brother, Barney, who would later joke that they had a condition called “PBD - Permanent Brain Damage,” that allowed them to tolerate the risks of mountaineering.
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