Everest anniversary
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Jim Whittaker, left, and Sherpa Nawang Gombu summited Mount Everest together in 1963. It cemented a bond for the two men. Click through our gallery to see Whittaker’s time on Everest, and how his son, Leif, has followed in his footsteps.

Whittaker summits Mount Everest on May 1, 1963, at 1 p.m.

Jim Whittaker after the climb.

Sherpas, known as high-altitude porters in 1963, carry packs on the 185-mile trek to reach Everest base camp.

Climbers work their way through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall, a shedding glacier just after Everest base camp.

The Khumbu Icefall is also where expedition member Jake Breitenbach lost his life when the ice became unstable and buried him (not pictured).
President John F. Kennedy awards Jim Whittaker the Hubbard Medal.
Whittaker, right, and his son, Leif, near Everest base camp in 2012.
Leif Whittaker captured this photo as Dave Hahn ascends the rocky Geneva Spur between Camp 3 and Camp 4 in 2010. The following images feature his stunning photographry during 2010 and 2012 on Everest.
Mount Everest base camp at night during the 2012 expedition.

Leif Whittaker stands on the summit of Mount Everest on May 26, 2012.
Camp 3, at 24,000 feet above sea level, on the Lhotse Face at sunset during the 2010 expedition.
Expedition member Dave Hahn peers out at the Himalaya from Pumori Camp I in 2012.
A Buddhist stupa on the trail to Mount Everest Base Camp in 2012.
Expedition member Melissa Arnot uses a ladder to cross in the Khumbu Icefall in 2012.
Camp 2, at 21,300 feet, in an Everest featured named the Western Cwm, in 2010.
Jim and Leif pause for a moment on the trail to Mount Everest Base Camp in 2012.

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(CNN) — When Jim Whittaker became the first American to stand on top of Mount Everest 50 years ago, he was anything but elated.
Reaching Earth’s highest point only 10 years after New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary became the first to summit, Whittaker said 50 mph winds were “blowing like hell,” compounding the already outrageous temperature of 35 below zero.
The jetstream blasted Whittaker and Sherpa Nawang Gombu as Whittaker pounded the pick of his American flag into the ice.
But when the two men looked down from their perch, 29,028 feet above sea level, they realized summiting was not their journey’s end. They still had far to go, and they’d just run out of bottled oxygen on top of the world.
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Sherpas, climbers sign Everest treaty
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Saudi woman makes Everest history
“Oh, boy, we’ve got to get down,” Whittaker thought. “Getting to the summit is half of the climb. You’re working so hard to get up, you don’t really think about anything else.”
Whittaker’s expedition members’ childhoods had been filled with a passion for climbing.
Richard Pownall was bitten by the mountaineering bug in 1943 when an English teacher sent students to the library to pick out a book. After reading about climbing, Pownall got a summer job working at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, but that stint couldn’t sate his curiosity and zeal for exploration.
Whittaker discovered his passion at 14, scaling the peaks of the Northwest U.S. and, later, while guiding people up Mount Rainier in college. After summiting Mount McKinley, the highest U.S. peak, the next natural step was “the big one,” he said.
When the Americans began scaling Everest, their journey was far different from that of today’s climbers. For one, they were the only team on the mountain at the time.
They also had to trek 185 miles through the sweltering Chitwa Jungle, their packs stuffed with cold-weather gear for when the elevation rose. That’s about the distance from Seattle, Washington, to Portland, Oregon, though the Nepalese trek involves pathways along 18,000-foot ridges, Whittaker pointed out.
Today, climbers fly 140 miles into Nepal and trek 40 miles into base camp.
80-year-old Japanese man becomes oldest to climb Mount Everest
Once at Everest, it wasn’t long before Whittaker’s expedition experienced disaster. Two days into the climb, three men were opening a route through the Khumbu Icefall — where descending glaciers break off into jagged, car- and house-sized chunks — when glacier pieces collapsed around them, burying them in ice, Pownall said.
He was able to climb out, but ended his summit attempt.

Jake Breitenbach, a 27-year-old guide from Jackson, Wyoming, didn’t survive. He was buried deep in the ice. His body wouldn’t be recovered until much later.
“You’re halfway around the world,” Whittaker said. “You immediately think of your family.”
They were all shaken, but Everest’s fierce conditions forbade them from dwelling on it. They had to keep moving. They could mourn later.
Though the view from the peak is spectacular, the Himalayas and Nepal unfolding beneath them, Whittaker said his team was more amazed by the scenery on their way back down. After months of living in thin air, they noticed the air became thicker and softer as the oxygen increased.
At one point, they found themselves clustered, looking down at a little blade of grass coming up through the scree.
“This green, emerald green — God, it was just incredible,” Whittaker said. “There is nothing growing up above, no color — it’s all snow, ice and rock. We were in tears. We had lost Jake up on the mountain but now we were coming back into life, this beautiful, lush, gorgeous planet that supports life. A little blade of grass just stunned the whole team.”
Almost 49 years after summiting Everest, Whittaker, then-83, found himself back at base camp in 2012. His son, Leif, 27, wanted to reach the so-called “Head of the Sky” for a second time. Leif Whittaker had done it without his father in 2010.
Whittaker and his son had trekked to a base camp in 2003, but they had no intention of summiting.
First Saudi woman summits Mount Everest
Whittaker said he never encouraged or discouraged his son from mountaineering, but his son discovered it for himself at age 15. After being asked so many times if he’d follow in his dad’s footsteps up the face of Everest, Leif found his answer on their 2003 trip.
“It was the natural power and majesty of that place that I felt some special connection to,” Leif said. “I think we all are affected by landscapes in a different way, and for me, a boy who had grown up with that idea of Mount Everest in his head, seeing Everest for the first time made me want to climb it.”

Whittaker hoped to walk into base camp with his son in 2012, but a day from their destination, he caught an intestinal bug. The seasoned mountaineer who had once conquered Everest was within him, telling him to keep going, but he decided it was too dicey.
Meanwhile, Leif Whittaker faced a different danger: overcrowding. Ten people died on Everest in 2012, raising questions about how many people should receive permits to scale the perilous peak.
Leif waited for more than an hour at 28,700 feet, just below the summit, as 100 people slowly descended the tricky Hillary Step. If it hadn’t been for calm winds May 26, the last window of good weather, he would have been forced back down.
“Each person climbs Everest for different reasons. The reason that I climb is because I love the mountain, I love what comes with it: the view from the top, the camaraderie of good teammates, the personal challenge of the experience, pushing past your own boundaries and growing because of that experience.”
Father and son experienced the magnitude of emotion that comes with being at Everest together, and Whittaker is proud his son reached the summit twice. While the achievement continues the family legacy, Whittaker wanted his children to appreciate the life around them.
“I came back from Everest without ego because you realize how insignificant you are, just a speck in the vast universe,” Whittaker said. “You dwell in the silence of the forest and the high mountains. They are the highest cathedrals in the world.”
Childhood dream leads climber up Everest — twice in one week
Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/24/us/everest-1963-expedition-whittaker/index.html?eref=edition
The Sydney Opera House took center stage at the opening of the Vivid Sydney festival.
The festival is in its fifth year and 2013 is the first time the Sydney Harbour Bridge has been lit up as part of the show. There is an interactive programming station that allows the public to control the lights on the bridge.
The festival is anticipated to draw 550,000 people, organizers say.
The festival has three parts: Vivid Light, Vivid Music and Vivid Ideas. Here, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia gets a new life as part of Vivid Light.
Customs House is another iconic Sydney structure lit up for the festival.
As well as guys in their 60s wearing jumpsuits, the Kraftwerk show came with 3-D effects.
German techno pioneers Kraftwerk headline Vivid Music. They are one of around 25 music performances during the festival. It is music. Non-stop.
Darling Harbour was part of Vivid Light for the first time, transforming the area into a spectacle of dancing water fountains.
Projections onto the water fountains were masterminded by France’s legendary Aquatique Show International.
“Vivid Sydney is now the Southern Hemisphere’s largest festival of light, music and ideas,” NSW Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner said.
The 3-D-mapped light projections on the Opera House’s sails were produced by Australian creative outfit, The Spinifex Group.

































