Aiming High Despite Life’s Lows

In 1998, Tom Whittaker braved a climb to Mt. Everest’s 29,000-foot summit because people said he couldn’t. He was 50 years old at the time and had a prosthetic foot.

“For me, Everest represented overcoming tremendous odds to achieving a dream,” Whittaker said. “I realized my dreams had been sequential. Each had led to a more lofty goal. They led me to Everest.”

Two decades before, on an Idaho highway, a distracted motorist had struck Whittaker’s Volkswagen van head on, crushing both his feet and shattering his right knee.

At the time, Whittaker was a successful outdoorsman. He had emigrated from Britain to the United States to make adventure sports and education his full-time career. He had scaled Mt. McKinley and El Capitan, kayaked the Grand Canyon’s white waters and climbed frozen waterfalls in the Canadian Rockies. There was so much more he wanted to do. He pleaded with surgeons not to amputate his feet.

But though the surgeons were able to save Whittaker’s left foot, they told him that his right foot and kneecap were shattered beyond repair. They removed his patella. They amputated his foot. Whittaker was crestfallen.

“I lost my foot, my life savings and my means of making a living,” Whittaker said. “Now I had to reinvent myself and come up with a new plan. I didn’t come to the United States to live a small life. I came to do something big.”

Whittaker moved into an abandoned apartment building and took the first job offered him. It was at a shoe store. Unable to afford a prosthetic, Whittaker crafted one from a cigar box and lashed it to his leg with an elastic bandage.

What hurt him most was his fellow outdoorsmen’s reaction to his amputation. “They were devastated that this happened to me,” he said. “But when I’d say, ‘Hey, don’t worry, I’m going to climb Yosemite Valley’s ‘Outer Limits,’ it really embarrassed them. They’d shuffle about and lose eye contact. They believed I was in a delusional state.”

Gradually, Whittaker returned to his outdoor activities. He kayaked down the Snake River in Idaho, crutches tucked in his boat. When he finally could afford a high-quality prosthesis, he resumed his backpacking, orienteering and spelunking activities. He also completed a master’s degree in athletic administration and founded the Cooperative Wilderness Handicapped Outdoor Group to offer disabled individuals a chance to experience challenging outdoor activities.

When he felt ready, he traveled to Yosemite Valley to attempt the “Outer Limits,” a formidable climbing zone near Highway 140 and the Merced River. His colleagues thought the idea preposterous.

“It was the most terrifying thing I had done in my adult life,” Whittaker said. “Because as I stood at the foot of it, I realized, ‘Here was the physical manifestation of all my hopes and dreams.’ ”

He made it to the top. Perhaps it was Whittaker’s early brushes with skepticism that forged his steely “can-do” attitude. As a child, he was dyslexic and functionally illiterate, he said. His teachers beat him. His future looked grim.

“I couldn’t pass any entrance exams to get into a decent school,” Whittaker said. “I left the British education system as a ditch digger.”

While working construction jobs during the day, he took evening classes, coached sports and built up his rugby skills. Eventually, his athletic talents gained him acceptance to the University of London, where he majored in physical education.

In 1976, he relocated to the United States to establish himself as a top-class outdoorsman. Though his 1979 auto accident sidelined him, it did not stop him. Nor did it prevent him from accepting a friend’s challenge, 10 years later, to become the first amputee to reach Mt. Everest’s summit.

“Once she’d suggested it, I couldn’t think of anything else,” said Whittaker, who now lives in Prescott, Ariz.

In the last 100 years, more than 150 climbers have died on Mt. Everest’s slopes. Countless others have been repelled by the mountain’s 100-mph winds, violent storms, wind-chill temperatures that reach 140 below zero, and oxygen-thin air.

Whittaker would have physical concerns as well: Without his kneecap, he had about 50% muscle function in his right leg, he said. And if his stump were to swell during the ascent and he was unable to reattach his prosthesis, there was a chance he might not make it down the mountain alive.

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In 1989, Whittaker made his first Everest attempt. He reached 21,500 feet before turning back during a storm that took the lives of five people on other expeditions. In 1995, he attempted the climb again, coming to within 1,500 feet of the summit before wild storms buried his team’s tents under 4 feet of snow and forced his retreat.

Whittaker vowed a final rematch with the mountain. This time, rather than be a team member, he aspired to lead an expedition. It would cost an estimated $300,000 for such an undertaking. Whittaker approached potential corporate sponsors. Again and again, he was rebuffed.

The highly publicized deaths of eight Everest climbers in 1996 had made corporate financiers justifiably skittish. They feared that supporting another Everest climb would be a public relations disaster.

“And their feeling was, if something befell a disabled person, society would hold them responsible,” Whittaker said.

But Whittaker wouldn’t give up. He persisted in his fund-raising activities, eventually landing backing from several sponsors, including Prescott, Ariz.-based Inter-Cal Corp., maker of Ester-C vitamin ingredients; North Face, a San Leandro, Calif., outdoor-gear company; Prescott College in Arizona; and Flex-Foot, an Aliso Viejo maker of prosthetic devices.

“Raising the money was almost harder than climbing the mountain,” said Angela Hawse, a professional mountain guide who became deputy leader of the expedition.

In May 1998, Whittaker and his teammates set off on a 29,000-foot hike skyward. Winds of 100 mph destroyed their tents and equipment. Whittaker came down with a flu-like illness and was forced to return to base camp when fluid collected in his lungs. A physician urged him to leave the mountain; he believed Whittaker had contracted a lung infection and, possibly, pulmonary edema--a dangerous accumulation of fluid in his lungs. But Whittaker swore he wouldn’t quit, despite the medical opposition.

“He was very in touch with what he was physically capable of,” Hawse said. “I think part of his motivation came from hearing so many people tell him he couldn’t do it. He’s got a big ego, but he’s also got a big heart.”

After the symptoms subsided, Whittaker, accompanied by teammate Jeff Rhoads and four Sherpa guides, resumed his ascent. In the morning hours of May 27, 1998, they finally reached Everest’s summit.

“My belief is that if, as people with disabilities, we argue for our limitations, that is what we will have: limitations,” Whittaker wrote in a letter, following his climb. “If, however, we refuse to be defined by society and define ourselves--we have the power to break the stereotype.”

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Today, when not scaling mountains, Whittaker works as a corporate motivational speaker. He also heads a nonprofit trust, the Windhorse Legacy, which supports grass-roots initiatives and programs for people with disabilities.

Whittaker’s next goal is to scale the Seven Summits, the highest peaks of the seven continents. Only about 60 people have accomplished it.

Whittaker’s message is simple: “It’s not the falling down but the getting up that matters.”

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Going After Your Dreams

In 1998, outdoorsman Tom Whittaker successfully scaled Mt. Everest at the age of 50. He did so on a prosthetic foot. Years before, a car crash had shattered his right foot and kneecap. But the incident didn’t shatter his dreams. Here are Whittaker’s five tips for pursuing your dreams:

1. Make sure your goals come from within. Internal motivation is much more powerful than external motivation.

2. Develop a credo based upon your values, principles and sense of self. Don’t let others define these things for you.

3. Don’t compromise or take shortcuts. Love the process rather than the illusion of “winning” or “getting there.” By focusing on the journey, you become a better problem solver.

4. Face your fears. Acknowledge them and move ahead. Don’t flee from anticipated pain or injury.

5. Live a big life. Set tall goals. Achieve mastery in all that’s important to you.