West Coast climber who was the first American to summit Everest dies at 97

Jim Whittaker, the pioneering climber who became the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1963, has died at 97. His family confirmed he passed peacefully at his home in Port Townsend, Washington. Whittaker’s Everest triumph came 10 years after the legendary Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first scaled the peak....