89-year-old George Whitmore, a member of the first team to climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park and a conservationist who devoted his life to protecting the Sierra Nevada, has died.
Friends, family, colleagues, and his fellow climbers mourned the passing of the last surviving member of the trio that was the first to reach the top of El Capitan on Nov. 12, 1958. Climbing up the 3,000-foot (914-meter) sheer granite rock wall that now attracts climbers from around the world was, at the time of the climb, a feat considered out of human reach.
Whitmore died on New Year’s Day from complications caused by COVID-19.
