"Yes, I Will"

The letters formed an elegant chronicle of hope and hardship, ambition and anguish, written by a plain man who looked only up. In the moonlight, Jim Whittaker wrote to his mother, "this is the most beautiful mountain in the world." "Onward and upward," he wrote to his brother, despite his sorrow at the death of a fellow climber. "I've been an individual enough of my life," he wrote to his wife, Blanche. "The important thing is that someone makes it. I'll be happy to go as high as I can or as high as I am permitted to go--either one." Last week his family, the U.S. and the world learned that James Warren Whittaker, 34, had gone as high as a man can and still cling to earth. From Katmandu, Nepal, came word that it was Whittaker, together with a Sherpa guide named Nwang Gombu,* who planted a U.S. flag at the summit of Mount Everest on May 1. The Best in a Person. Manager of a Seattle store that sells mountaineering equipment, towering (6 ft. 5 in., 210 Ibs.) Jim Whittaker started climbing as a Boy Scout in the early 1940s. By the time he and his twin brother Lou were in high school, they were expert enough to join Seattle's Mountain Rescue Council. The twins spent college summers guiding footsore tourists up the steep slopes of 14,408-ft. Mount Rainier; in all, they scaled Rainier something like 70 times. Three years ago, Jim and Lou were members of an ill-fated expedition that got stranded for four days on Alaska's 20,320-ft. Mount McKinley when one of the climbers slipped and pulled the others (who were roped to him) down a steep slope; only the Whittakers' superb physical condition and mountaineering skill pulled them through. "Mountain climbing brings out the best in a person," Jim Whittaker insisted. "It forces him to try to get something normally beyond his reach." Examined by a psychologist before they left for Nepal, each member of the U.S. Everest expedition was asked the same pointed question: "Will you get to the top?" Most of the men said, "I certainly hope so" or "I'll do my best." Said Jim Whittaker: "Yes, I will." He did--but he lost 30 Ibs. during the six-week-long climb. On the final day, the temperature was a numbing -30DEGF. Gale-force winds lashed Everest's face as Whittaker and Gombu said goodbye to Expedition Leader Norman Dyhrenfurth at 28,100 ft. and began to work their way to the summit, 928 ft. above. It was, said Dyhrenfurth, "a miracle" that the two men made it. Whittaker and Gombu stayed at the summit 30 minutes, enjoying the view (they could pick out Rongbuk Monastery, 11,000 ft. below) and snapping photos to authenticate their ascent. Then they went back down to tell Dyhrenfurth the news. Bound to Change. At week's end the final chapter of the Everest climb was being written. Two other U.S. assault teams were on the mountain. One five-man squad was struggling toward the summit by way of Everest's West Ridge --a route that has never been attempted before. Another four-man team was trying to retrace Whittaker's path up the South Col. But to Jim Whittaker belonged the honor of being the first American ever to set foot on the top of the world. "Some change will come out of all this," said his wife last week. "I can't imagine Jim going to work and coming home again and having dinner on the porch, just like before."

* A nephew of Tenzing Xorkey, the famous Sherpa who accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary on the first successful Everest ascent in 1953-

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