28 Facts About Jim Wickwire

Jim Wickwire was raised in the small town of Ephrata, Washington, by James and Dorothy Jim Wickwire.

Jim Wickwire played football for Ephrata High School and Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Washington, where he was part of an unbeaten team in 1961 that was later invited to the Junior Rose Bowl.

Jim Wickwire chose to leave football and enroll in Gonzaga University, where he graduated law school.

Jim Wickwire made several pioneering ascents of Mount Rainier's 3,600 feet foot Willis Wall in the 1960s and 1970s, which had remained unclimbed until 1961.

When Jim Wickwire finally climbed K2 for the first time, seven climbers had already died there.

Jim Wickwire reached the summit of K2 with Louis Reichardt on September 6,1978.

Jim Wickwire lingered a little longer, with the intention of catching up.

Jim Wickwire had done bivouacs before and knew he just needed to gut it out until daylight, which was risky because of the thin air and severe cold.

Jim Wickwire did not have a tent, sleeping bag, or water.

Jim Wickwire's oxygen ran out halfway through the night, and his gas stove became inoperable.

Jim Wickwire's only protection, other than his immediate winter clothing, was a thin nylon bivvy sack, which is uninsulated but windproof and helps to retain body heat.

Jim Wickwire shivered uncontrollably from the extreme cold and kept slowly sliding down the slope.

Jim Wickwire lost parts of two toes and underwent lung surgery due to blood clots on his lungs ; he caught pneumonia and pleurisy.

The surgeon expressed uncertainty about Jim Wickwire's ever climbing at high altitudes again.

Nevertheless, Jim Wickwire continued high-altitude climbing a couple of years later, climbing the slopes of Alaska's Denali in preparation for his climbing expedition on Mount Everest.

In 1981, Jim Wickwire was traversing a glacier on Denali, with 25-year-old Mount Rainier guide Chris Kerrebrock in the lead.

Jim Wickwire was able to slowly climb out with an ice axe but was unable to rescue Kerrebrock, who was alive but wedged in tightly, still wearing his backpack and upside down.

Jim Wickwire then descended on rope anchored to a snow picket, and attempted moving Kerrebrock's tightly wedged backpack from within the crevasse, but all efforts were futile.

Jim Wickwire led park rangers to the site, and they extracted Kerrebrock from the location.

Jim Wickwire thought about quitting the upcoming expedition to Mount Everest stating, "the furthest thought in my mind was Everest at that point".

Jim Wickwire's wife convinced him to think about it for a length of time before deciding one way or the other, so there would be no regrets down the road.

Jim Wickwire heeded his wife's advice, and in 1982, he was climbing Everest's slopes with the planned group for the expedition.

Jim Wickwire made four attempts on the north side of Mount Everest, in: 1982,1984,1993, and 2003.

Jim Wickwire looked back at the fixed rope and saw Hoey's open climbing waist harness still attached via a jumar.

Jim Wickwire couldn't compute at first what had happened, but later realized that her harness strap had not held, because Hoey hadn't threaded "the end of her belt back through the buckle ".

At the time of Kerrebrock's death, Jim Wickwire had been working for 20 years to become "one of the world's most accomplished mountain climbers".

Jim Wickwire's wife had supported him during the years that he was a risk taker in the mountains.

Jim Wickwire is a retired attorney living in Seattle, Washington.