Pocatello's Tom Whittaker failed in his bid to become the first handicapped person to scale Mount Everest, but he regrets nothing about the trip.
"I'm a teeny bit disappointed, but I had a whale of a good time," Whittaker, 40, said Monday by telephone from Katmandu, Nepal.Weather and illness prevented Whittaker and the other two Idahoans on the 1989 American Everest Expedition, Jeff and Kellie Rhoads of Inkom, from making the summit of the world's highest mountain.
Four team members did scale the peak: Adrian Burgess of Boulder, Colo., Australian Roddy McKenzie, and two local Sherpas.
Equipped with a prosthetic right foot, Whittaker climbed to the 23,500-foot level on the 29,028-foot mountain. Though he is the first disabled person to attempt the climb, "It wasn't a trip to put the first cripple on the summit. I had to earn my place on the summit team."
Many of the expedition's 15 members were hit by illness since they arrived in Nepal in April, he said. "People got sick, one after another."
Whittaker lost most of his right foot after a head-on auto crash nine years ago.