Minds of Mountainfilm 2010: Mount Rainier Then and Now, by Peter Whittaker

Each Memorial Day weekend, artists and activists, filmmakers and photographers come to Telluride for Mountainfilm. At our core, we are about exploring, preserving and sustaining environments, cultures and conversations, so this unique gathering is part film festival and part ideas festival with leading edge thinkers – and doers – getting together to change the world. Leading up to this year’s festival we wanted to focus on conversations worth sustaining and we’ve asked some of Mountainfilm’s special guests to help us out. Throughout the coming weeks we’ll be posting our conversations with them. We hope that they engage and inspire you.

If you want to participate in this discussion, just submit your questions via our Facebook page or our Twitter account.

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Peter Whittaker has one of the most impressive resumes in the world of mountaineering. With over 25 years of professional guiding experience, he has ascended Mount Rainier literally hundreds of times, and led expeditions on every continent of the globe. He co-founded Rainier Mountaineering Inc., the largest mountaineering service in the world. Some say that he was rightfully born into the First Family of American mountaineering – Peter’s father Lou and uncle Jim Whittaker are legendary mountaineers.

On top of his exceptional adventure repertoire, he has also managed to host his own television show, and organize an expedition for breast cancer survivors to summit Aconcagua that raised $2.3 million dollars for breast cancer research.

His extensive outdoor experience also means that he has had first hand experience with an ever changing environment, and knows the value of protecting wilderness. We got a chance to catch up with Whittaker in between summits, and this is what he had to say when we asked him about the ties between adventure and sustaining the natural environment.

Mount Rainier. Then and Now.

I grew up with Mt. Rainier National Park as my backyard.

My first memories are of riding up the seasonal Poma lift at Paradise and skiing down. Or of hiking out to the Ice Caves at the Paradise Glacier; and swimming in Reflection Lake nestled at the base of the Tatoosh Range. I was eight years old when I first hiked up the snowfields to Camp Muir (10,080′). It was four years later, at the age of 12, when I stood on the summit for the first time. Since then I’ve climbed Rainier several hundred times and experienced firsthand the changes that have occurred on this great mountain.