Original subtitles

Introduce yourself, what's your name?

My name's Bob Whittaker, I'm 48 years old, a Leo.

How did you get the name Bob?

I'm named after a good friend of my father's,

Bobby Kennedy, and he's my namesake.

Who's your dad?

Who's my dad? Yeah.

Jim Whittaker, first American

to climb Mt. Everest, Seattle luminary,

CEO of REI, worked there for 25 years.

Environmentalist, peace activist.

Let's do it.

Bruce, who is Bob Whittaker?

Who is Bob Whittaker, okay, pause, dramatic pause here.

In 1995, if you were walking the Outback in Australia

and you told somebody you were from Seattle,

they'd be going, "Oh, Nirvana, Soundgarden,

"Pearl Jam," maybe Mudhoney.

It's amazing to reflect on what that culture looked like

at its very inception, and what it looked like was a handful

of people drinking craft beer, rocking out

and crowd surfing, and one of those guys was Bob Whittaker.

I knew of him, just because of him being a big asshole

at parties and shows and whatnot.

But I'm driving up to Seattle one night,

it was at a Mudhoney show,

and I see this car coming up behind me,

and it's a convertible,

and there's this white corkscrew hair flying everywhere,

and I'm looking in my rear view mirror, and I'm going,

like, "Oh, here comes some hot chick in a convertible."

It pulls up alongside of me, and I look over,

and it's Bob, and I went, "Ah, ah,"

and he just takes off.

♪ No time like the present

♪ To get ripped apart

♪ Got this

So now, Mudhoney shows, everybody would be there,

everybody in town.

Mudhoney was the loosest band you could ever see.

You never knew what was gonna happen,

they could fall apart at any second.

They brought a sense of, again, irreverence

that became infamous.

And Bob Whittaker had a lot to do with that.

Hey.

What's your middle name?

Mudhoney was leaving for a tour, and they're like,

"Yeah, we're gonna bring this guy Bob along

"with us to help do the driving

" 'cause he doesn't know how to do anything else."

He was drafted in to be our roadie,

the joke is, if you asked him to help carry an amp

he'd be like, "Carry it yourself, that's not mine."

No, no, no, Bob didn't lift a finger moving anything.

I gotta go to work.

Hey, man, you gotta work, Bob,

you get paid for something.

We'd be playing shows, and there'd be some kind

of ruckus, and some drunk guy in a corner doing something

that he shouldn't be doing, who the hell is that guy?

"That guy, well, that's our manager,

"you're gonna be paying him later."

What's the Bob show?

Oh, just when things just start happening,

where he gets a little drunk, and all of a sudden,

like a chair gets broken, or a bottle gets broken,

or a window, or-- Thing get lit on fire.

A knife gets thrown. Darts and apples on heads.

So Bob Whittaker was the fifth member of Mudhoney.

Even though he wasn't playing music,

he toured with the band, he partied with the band,

he represented Seattle, he represented Mudhoney.

So if you partied with Mudhoney,

you were partying with Whittaker.

Bob!

The fuck is going on in here?

We like to party.

Hey, guy.

One of the times we went down the West Coast

without Bob, everybody at the shows were like,

"Where's Bob," like Bob was more popular than us.

Yeah.

I mean, Bob was a legend,

and still is. In his own right.

Okay, here we go.

Let's see, Whittaker, Whittaker.

So that's good, this is the only mountain I've ever climbed,

that's Mount Rainier in 19...let's see,

I don't know, I was 17.

I was pretty exhausted, we got to the summit,

and I threw up my breakfast, which was a piece of toast

and a Snickers bar, and then we went down,

and I was like, "God, this is really not that fun."

Oh, rough stuff.

We were on tour somewhere,

and we were up in Massachusetts,

and he'd just got off the phone with his dad,

and he's like, "We should go visit Rose."

And I go, "What are you talking about, Rose who?"

And he's like, "Oh, Rose Kennedy,"

and he's like, "I should go to the Kennedy Compound

"and give them a visit," and I go,

"What are you talking about," like,

"how do you know the Kennedys?"

And he's like,

"Oh, well, my dad climbed Mount Everest one time,"

and blah blah blah.

Last time I saw my dad was gosh, I don't even recall.

Hey, how are you? Good to see you, Bob.

Nice to see you.

Good to see you.

Hello.

You got your Woolrich on.

Yeah, my Woolrich, how you doing?

How you doing, good, hey, dude.

What's up, bud?

Good to see you.

Yep.

Did you come up last night?

Yeah, it was easier.

Jim Whittaker was mister mountain,

I mean, Mount Rainier, he had been on Everest.

So when you talk about mountains,

you talked about Jim Whittaker.

Jim Whittaker was an iconic figure,

the early '60s, and Jim Whittaker being the first American

on top of Everest.

Why climb the highest mountain?

Liftoff, we have a liftoff.

It's of a piece with Neil Armstrong walking

on the moon, these events weren't that far apart.

I'm at the foot of the ladder.

When you start to know a little bit more

about his identical twin, Lou,

their history of climbing in the 1940s, '50s,

back when climbing wasn't popular.

And these guys were way out front.

You know, that was recognized in the invitation

to be on that first American expedition on Everest.

No surprise that Jim Whittaker ended up leading the charge

to the Summit.

"Awarded to the American Mount Everest Expedition, 1963,

"Norman G. Dyhrenfurth, leader for outstanding contributions

"to geography through high altitude research

"and exploration, conquests of earth's highest peak

"by six courageous climbers, pioneering a West Ridge route,

"and making the first Summit traverse."

Pretty cool.

I have a great relationship with my dad.

I've spent a lot of time kind of trying to live up

to the legacy that he's passed down to me.

And honestly, I mean, trying to make him proud,

I think like every son does.

Boy, there's no snow out there, huh?

No, look at the mountains,

there's not a lot of snow at all.

Jim was a type of person, he was always climbing

with adults, and it was his livelihood.

I'm sure it was tough for somebody like Jim Whittaker

to start a family, and then the nature

of your thing you excel at is being halfway

around the world for extended periods of time.

I think Bobby had a really different upbringing

than I did, I'm guessing it was probably harder

in many ways.

Bobby went out on his own pretty early,

at 18, he left that relationship, and went

and lived on his own, paid for his own place,

didn't ask anyone for money, and was off and running.

I have had a very distant relationship with my father

since I lived with him briefly for my high school years.

Not only was he building the franchise of REI,

but he was an outdoor adventurer, that was his industry.

So leaving, being gone for large chunks of time was

his work, that's incredibly difficult and taxing.

It took a bite out of me for decades.

I think it did him too, you know?

It's nice to be a part of something,

and it's hard to remain a part of something

when you keep leaving your hometown or your family.

Starting with the presidents, there's Eisenhower here,

and then there's Clinton, President Clinton,

there's President Reagan.

I like your rain jacket,

it looks like a 97 cent Kmart rain jacket,

he was the first American to climb Mount Everest

in an old lady's rain slicker.

You met him on the plane?

Yeah, I met Bobby at Sea-Tac.

Is that at Sun Valley with Bobby and John Glenn?

Yeah.

And that's at the tennis club, Christopher's there, I think.

Chris Kennedy?

Yeah, that's Chris.

My father had the same feeling

about people like Jim Whittaker, John Glenn

and others that became his lifelong friends.

He wouldn't want to do what they did,

but he liked them for having done it.

Is this--

Okay, this is when we first met.

I showed you this one, I guess, from,

"'How dull it is to pause, to make an end.

"'To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

"'As though to breathe were life.'

"To Seek a Newer World. When we find it,

"I trust you will haul me up it.

"From his friend, Bob Kennedy."

This is where I live, not like the Yukon,

but next best thing.

Here is, not this page, it says.

Here we are at the airport.

That's you and Kennedy?

Yes, I have to keep pinching myself

to see whether I actually was there or not,

it's been 50 years, and it almost seems like

we were up there just a few years ago.

This was the scene

at Arlington National Cemetery, Washington.

John F. Kennedy, the president,

had been torn from life by an assassin's bullet.

His brother, Robert, paid homage to a great man

who had set himself so many noble tasks,

but whom fate had not allowed to carry them out.

Canadians were just as tragically stricken

as the Americans were, when they heard

of the assassination, they wanted to do something.

Prime Minister Lester Pearson,

on November 20th, 1964, came to the floor of the House,

said that, "I think it's very appropriate,

"my fellow commoners, that we find

"an unclimbed mountain somewhere in Canada,

"a suitable mountain, climb it,

"claim it, and then map the area."

You know, the Canadians weren't sure

of what mountains had been climbed

and which hadn't been climbed and everything.

Bradford Washburn, the Director of Boston Museum of Science,

said, "I've got a peak in the Saint Elias range

"that looks like a mountain," he says,

"it looks like the Matterhorn,

"and there's a plume of snow blowing off the summit,

"there's your mountain."

This was the peak that the government

of Canada was to name in honor of President John F. Kennedy,

partly because of its beauty, and partly

because its position, almost on the international frontier,

symbolized the friendship between our two great nations,

which President Kennedy so fervently espoused.

There's what got me mapping with Brad Washburn.

We did this one,

this is the mountains right here around the house.

Why do you like maps?

Oh, I don't know, they tell you a lot.

Maps tell you an awful lot.

Especially if you know what goes into it,

then you can pick up the map years later,

and you can put your finger on any point,

and you say, "Oh, yes, I remember the day we were there,

"I remember the angle that we turned.

"I remember the distance it was."

And you can always go back to the map.

It's sort of, I guess in a way,

sort of like going back to nature.

Bradford Washburn ran the museum in Boston,

and his new United States Senator was Ted Kennedy.

Bradford invited him to be part of

that mapping exercise the following March.

Teddy was in a terrible plane crash

in Western Massachusetts, he lived,

but he was unable to go.

So I think he persuaded my father to do that,

that was not something my father naturally wanted to do.

And so I was working for Bradford Washburn,

and in the midst of it all, I get a call,

"How would you like to go to the Yukon?

"We're gonna have a little expedition,

"we're gonna map the area,

"and you're not gonna believe this,

"but Senator Robert Kennedy has expressed a desire,

"he would like to be the first one on the mountain."

And I said, "I didn't know he climbed mountains."

He says, "He doesn't."

Why is this, after so many years,

and so much climbing around this area,

why has Mount Kennedy been left?

It's inaccessible, has only recently been named.

As an individual peak, and

of course, naming it,

Kennedy has made it quite an attractive climb.

The reason we wanted to climb it was it was named

after the president of the United States,

and it had never been climbed before.

That's a perfect goal for a mountaineer.

Is this the best time of the year to do this?

Well, it's better than somewhat earlier.

Temperatures should not get any lower

than 35 below zero...

Does experience fom Mount Everest help you

in this climb? It doesn't hurt.

We went to get the copies of maps

from the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys

and there are these beautiful maps

that were only about half colored in.

The other half of the map were huge areas

of white space, and in parentheses were the words,

"Area unexplored, probably mountains and glaciers."

How about Senator Kennedy?

Is he going to join you?

There is a good chance that he will, yes.

So I get the call saying,

"Could Senator Kennedy come on the climb?"

And so I said, "Oh, sure, has he ever climbed before?"

And he said, "No," and I said,

"Does he know the mountain has never been climbed?"

He says, "Yeah, I think," and I said,

"He still wants to go?"

He said, "Yeah," I said, "Okay."

And that's when I called him,

and said, "What are you gonna do,

"are you getting in shape, Senator?"

And he said, "Yeah, I'm running up and down the stairs,

"practicing hollering help,"

and yeah, I thought, oh, boy.

Here's the team, there's Jim Whittaker,

the Senator, and I'm in the back row there.

It was a coming together, it was a coming together

of ideology, it was a coming together in sorrow.

It was just one more situation where Canada

and the US are the best of neighbors,

and the fact that the Canadians went all out on this,

it was a very gracious gesture.

That's what I remember most about it.

You know, we spent a lot of time with Jim

when we were little kids, he talked

about Mount Kennedy, he talked about our father,

about how he handled himself on the mountain,

and that set a high bar for all of the kids.

Look at the slopes, huh?

Yeah, cool snowshoes that you got there.

Yeah.

We were looking at this little gem here,

thinking, well, how can we promote that?

How can we drill back down into that?

There's only been a few pages in National Geographic

about it, a few pages in Life Magazine.

When I was on Everest in 2012 and 2010,

I kind of had these experiences

where I was following in my father's footsteps.

Thinking about Mount Kennedy was really appealing to me

because it was off the beaten path.

Very few people had visited it, I mean,

it's kind of the opposite of Mount Everest in many ways.

Probably Leif and I were speaking to Dad

about going back and doing a 50 years after climb.

The more we talked about it,

the more it sounded like a keen idea.

I called up Jim Whittaker and Dianne to try

to have dinner with them, and I thought we were going out

for a friendly drink and dinner, and in the middle

of the thing, Jim started pushing this notion

that this year would be the 50th anniversary of his climb

with my father, and that someone needed to do that.

My Dad basically said we should communicate

with him and gave me his number, so I reached out,

gave him a cold call.

And then some number

from Western Washington got through, and it was Bobby,

trying to confirm the commitment that I'd somehow made.

Here are these Kodachrome pictures

you're looking at, and these stories you've heard,

but the pieces aren't all there.

What about this other aspect, my namesake?

It'll be interesting to see what the mountain looks like

after 50 years. Yeah, really.

There's this notion that you get

from talking to Jim Whittaker that in between commitment

and confidence is character, he would commit to things

that he was not confident that he could complete,

and that is what shaped his character.

Yeah, it's go time.

How do you feel?

Out of shape, fat, old, faded.

But excited.

Why do you think Bob wants

to climb Mount Kennedy?

Maybe I don't know Bob that well.

What have you gotten me into?

You know, I'm not sure exactly why,

but I know it's important.

Did you ever know Bob

to be a physically fit person, physically active?

Bob to what?

Not only do I sit behind a desk all the time,

I follow that with a five hour dinner of rich food and wine.

My philosophy has always been... Fuck, I never had one.

Once Bobby has set the hook,

you know, he's on his way.

Mountains and wilderness always bring out the best

in people.

Off like a herd of turtles.

Hi.

Hi, how's it going?

Good.

Well, yeah, if you could just fill that out,

and then if you have the insurance card,

I can take a copy of it.

Does stress burn calories, I mean, that's--

think it does, yeah, I'm pretty sure it does.

I was like, oh, yeah, I mean, I can handle this,

You know, I'm gonna ramp up my exercise.

Well, it just doesn't happen,

didn't happen, hasn't happened.

Plus, you're crushingly old at this point too.

Yes, I am.

Thank you, I'll follow you, we'll go up there.

Have a seat.

Two things, one, your big picture plan.

Yeah, life's change.

What'd you say? Life change.

Is it?

Simple as that, yeah, pretty much--

Is it, what have you been doing?

Not exercising enough, that's about it.

I feel like I'm in pretty bad shape,

but luckily I quit my job last Friday.

I don't know if he's in a rut,

or if it's a midlife crisis that he's trying to come out of,

or what he's doing.

When's the climb?

May, the first two weeks in May.

Okay, so May 1st is our jump off date,

essentially. Basically, yeah.

In part, I might have put it on my horizon

to give myself a little bit of a pause

or a different direction or a different perspective.

Just squat. I'm a little worried about it

'cause the knee's been bothering me that much. Yes.

So oh, yeah.

So from there, let me have you bend

forward like you're gonna touch your toes.

Cool, and then back up, cool, do you stretch?

No, God, no.

Good, don't, and then one more on the left side.

Cool, you're doing exceptionally adequate, keep going.

Come on, there we go, own those last few degrees.

Back on your heels, excellent.

This is our timeline, so here's today,

this is May 1st, Mount Kennedy.

I think he's partly going out there

to see what he can do, see if he can climb Mount Kennedy,

see if he can handle it physically and emotionally,

and learn something about himself along the way.

He's gonna do this anyway, why don't we just make him

as functional as we can, knees, hips, back,

shoulder, heart, and we go from there?

Finally, a functional Bob.

Yes.

Yeah, that's--

Physiologically, I can't make any promises.

Do I have time for a cigarette?

Matt, is it rolling?

Yeah.

Is it rolling right now?

What you're about to see is several years

of footage taken of Mudhoney.

We are leaving today.

♪ My arms are all twisted

♪ The only thing I miss is I messed up ♪

♪ I missed it, I messed up the missing of you ♪

♪ It's getting to sound like they've seen you ♪

♪ around with her

So Bob,

what are you gonna do this whole tour?

I'm just fucking hanging out.

In the same way that Jim helped get REI off the ground,

Bob Whittaker shares a similar drive,

sense of adventure, and a DIY spirit.

He helped get Subpop Records off the ground,

and the grunge culture off the ground.

He was in the trenches,

he was out there representing Seattle back in 1988,

when they went all the way to New York in a van

where all they, the carbon monoxide was funneling back

into the van, and they had to huff that for 3,000 miles.

This is an hour after Bob had

an ice cream cone at McDonald's.

I just like to have a little snack on the road to keep me going.

♪ Take it away Nick!

♪ I don't even know what it's like ♪

♪ not to go back to you

♪ I don't even know who I like less ♪

Working with Mudhoney was incredible.

Traveling in a baby blue $900.00 van turned

into managing Mudhoney, signing them

to Warner Bros. Records, hiring more and more crew

as their career grew, it was pretty cool.

♪ Rock music

You want some more?

I got, oh, sorry, you want me

to look more tragic back here?

Oh my god, no. This is us in Hawaii.

We went and did a show with Pearl Jam

and I think maybe Sonic Youth.

I think I remember Vedder twisting his feet

into the sand so he'd look really short on purpose.

Man, a bunch of ugly white people

from Seattle going to Hawaii is what it was.

That's that. After a while,

some founding members left Mudhoney,

and they were taking a break.

I was debating going back to carpentry or who knows what.

And then a job position opened up with REM,

and I went on the road with those guys,

and I ended up tour managing them for 12 years, or something.

♪ I know you

Bob really, as a tour manager,

kind of stepped into the upper echelons of that.

I mean, he was road managing REM,

pretty much the top of the food chain,

as far as alternate music goes.

♪ She's three miles of bad road ♪

Over the years I've worked with a lot

of different acts, from Rufus Wainwright, Neko Case,

the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, one of my favorites.

♪ Meet her, she's a real woman child ♪

♪ Oh, my kiss breath turpentine ♪

I would go on the road, and you're running

on a lot of adrenalin, you've got a lot of people

to worry about, and so you're in three countries

in one day sometimes, and that's been my career.

I would come home, and screeching to a halt wasn't easy.

I'd be wanting to cut in line in the supermarket.

♪ My crush with eyeliner

The entertainment business in general can be very intense,

and I'm really happy that Bob chose to check out

of that when he did because it'll grind you down.

Growing up, I think Bobby

and I always had actually a pretty strong connection.

We laughed a lot, I just remember him cracking me up,

he's a jokester, a prankster, and he always has been,

and I love that about him.

But we didn't really spend much time together.

Reconnecting with him,

I think he's definitely mellowed out a little bit

and grown up, and I think he's also kind

of grown more connected to the outdoors.

I guess we all grow up eventually and get tired,

too tired to do all the shenanigans

you did when you were young.

Do you think that's it, or do you think he's really matured?

I think it was when he got the place in Ferry County.

For the past 10 years, Bob has been working out

in Ferry County on this trails project.

It's a 30 mile trail that's open to the general public.

It's an amazing project. Bob had the vision

to make this happen, and he had the political will

to get it passed.

His passion is now wilderness.

He's a lot like his dad in many ways.

In REM, I found a lot more dovetailing

of that punk idealism in civic duty and community.

Those guys are huge with giving back to the community

and making an effort in their town of Athens, Georgia.

And so I learned a lot from those guys.

There's a disconnect that's happened over the years,

there needs to be a greater focus on public lands,

there needs to be a greater focus on outdoor activity,

and focusing on that project and seeing it to fruition.

I mean, it's legacy work, it's taken forever.

It's all culminating in this trail for me.

Came full circle, I was like, aha,

this is why I do this, because of these chuckle heads

in 1965 that met on Mount Kennedy.

Jim, what do you think

about your sons following in your footsteps on this climb?

I'm proud of them, you bet, I think it's great.

I mean, any excuse to get out

and climb mountains, what the heck?

Enjoy this magical planet.

Hey.

Hey, man, how's it going?

Good to see you. Let's do it.

Yeah, get on the road.

After 50 years, this becomes the culmination,

the final chapter of the Mount Kennedy Yukon expedition.

♪ What you're looking for won't be found easily ♪

♪ It grows upon the mountain in a sacred place ♪

♪ Up beyond the clouds, in ancient grounds, so they say ♪

♪ And many men have died trekking up that way ♪

Thought you had a friend...fuck.

Holy shit.

That's a lot taller than I--

Where are we going, the Yukan, Yucatan?

Oops, they're big

Is that it?

Yep.

Thank you.

Ugh, I feel sick.

I don't know why I haven't been losing weight.

Fucking dick, all right, yeah, let's go there.

Dude, all right, I'm done, I'm done.

Forbiddingly, standing 14,000 feet

in the frozen Yukon, is Mount Kennedy,

named after the late president.

Highest unclimbed peak in the North American continent,

its challenge is now accepted by another Kennedy,

Senator Robert.

When I first met Bobby, he flew in from Washington, DC.

You've gotta be afraid of heights,

that's a blessing because I wouldn't climb with you,

I wouldn't rope up with you if you weren't

because you'd kill us.

Yeah, Jim Whittaker, I'll bet he knew the pressure was on,

taking Robert Kennedy out in the mountains.

These weren't lessons that he was learning

for the first time, that there was a lot on the line,

and that public failure wasn't acceptable.

When I say that, I don't mean getting

to the top of a mountain or not,

but I mean hurting an important person,

or getting an important person killed.

We flew into Whitehorse.

That was where we were looking for our next way

into the base of the mountain in a chopper.

I remember Brad was influential in getting us a flight in

because the ski plane couldn't make it,

but the Canadian Air Force chopper was sitting there,

idling, and Washburn walked over, I saw him talking

to the pilot, and he comes back,

he said, "we've got a ride."

I had never seen anything like it.

Flying over these glaciers, no,

I mean, I had never seen anything like the Yukon,

never seen anything like it.

A helicopter made the first 9,000 feet

the easiest, bringing the Senator, his fellow climbers,

and all the gear up to the first base camp.

Though not a mountain climber,

Robert Kennedy gladly accepted the invitation

to be the first man at the hitherto unconquered summit.

All he had to do now was to get there,

an undertaking that would have daunted most men new

to mountain climbing, a remarkable family,

these Kennedys, with a habit of accomplishing

whatever they set out to do.

Jim Whittaker, first American to climb Everest,

is in charge of the expedition.

There was a little bit of training required.

Don't step on your rope with your crampons on.

Keep your head down, keep breathing.

I think the Senator was quite taken with Jim.

On the plane, we got to know each other,

and then of course, on the mountain, when you climb

on a serious mountain, you develop this thing.

In a way, they were an odd couple.

In a way, they sort of admired each other's profession.

Of course, the senator would say to Jim,

"Boy, this is a mighty hazardous occupation

"that you've chosen here, I mean,

"this is dangerous stuff you're doing,

"you could lose your life doing this."

Very ironic observation.

It was a gorgeous, chilly spring day,

temperature a dip below zero, with a brisk little wind out

of the north.

And the weather was beautiful,

God, it was nice weather, and just a light wind,

maybe five knots.

At 13,000 feet, you come to a great plateau out

of which the summit pyramid of Mount Kennedy rises.

Here they stop, rearrange their ropes,

put on ice creepers, and prepared

for the ascent of this final summit pyramid

that rose about 800 feet out of the glacier.

Jim Whittaker, ahead, Senator Kennedy, second.

Coming up, it's really steep, and I was sure he'd fall.

It's hairy 'cause it drops off on each side.

So I was waiting for him to fall,

but he didn't, he came right up in my steps.

And he's walking up, and I said, "Stop there.

"That's the summit, Bobby, and it's your mountain,

"you go first, you go first."

I was so delighted 'cause I'd wanted him to get up there,

and so he was the first human being

to stand on the peak named after his brother.

I mean, that's one of the -- where the tears freeze

on the parka, you just, we were bawling.

And that was really emotional.

These days, we all talk about how adventurous we are,

but when you're smacked in the face

with the repercussions of adventure,

which involves making mistakes and dealing

with the consequences, that's a different thing.

Mount Kennedy is so rarely climbed,

and there's so little known about it.

There's been maybe 30 expeditions in history up there.

It was really hard to know

what we were getting ourselves into.

Good to see you.

Yeah, pleasure, I'm glad you made it.

Yeah, well, you know, I had to fly from Chicago

to Vancouver, and then Vancouver to Whitehorse.

But the most dangerous part was the last--

Driving with Bobby?

He kept asking me questions.

So we met Brian Jones and Rich,

our two guides that we'd be working with up on the mountain.

We started to sit down and talk about our strategy

for climbing there.

One of my concerns going onto a big mountain

with a group such as this, but what I mean

by such as this is that we've got--

Careful.

No, well, no, it's a very diverse level of experience.

We've got a lot of different objectives going on here

that we're looking after, ultimately,

we all have the same objective, get home.

I was sitting there, and kind of realized,

I'm the youngest person on the team,

but I'm also one of the most experienced.

And I'm responsible for all these people,

like Bobby, who's 18 years older than me,

and Chris, who's more than 20 years older than me,

and thinking of all the things that could go wrong,

and all the things that could happen.

And I didn't sleep much that night.

Once we're on that glacier, there's no guarantees

of when we're coming off.

Brian, who was familiar with the area,

was super candid, very honest about what we were getting

into, but nobody had actually climbed the mountain.

The pilot's plan would be

to come in the back side.

So here's the mountain right there.

Okay, and then he'll come follow these glaciers,

and then come in the cathedral? Yeah.

So many other sports or activities,

the great preparation comes from recreating

in your mind the experience you're about to have.

But for me, the idea of imagining for hours

on end what it's like to stand on that peak is not helpful.

So we sit down for the first meeting with the guides,

and they drop on us that they're very worried

about these two ice falls there have opened up a lot more

since 1965, which makes sense, global warming,

mountains change, whatever, glaciers move.

Well, I'm fine with what he said, and the changes.

You are too. Yeah, I mean, yeah.

We'll be fine.

Can you stop recording?

This is one of the best ones, no one has ever seen.

It's a great picture, and it was on the mountain.

When he came down from the mountain,

Jim was so impressed with Bobby,

and they became really good friends, from that moment on.

♪ The good, they die young

On that climb, Bobby and my dad both looked up

to each other, admired each other,

and I think inspired each other.

When he went back, he wrote,

"It's such a pleasure to climb with people

"that spend time outdoors, and I'm glad

"that I could join this fraternity

"of those that challenge themselves."

It was so up close and personal,

the relationship my father had with him.

After the climb, Bobby went straight back

to Washington, DC, but while they climbed,

they decided that we would go down a river together.

♪ He's gonna be one day

♪ Anybody here

♪ Seen my old friend Bobby

♪ Can you tell me where he's gone ♪

This is the Colorado, then there's Bobby,

there's me, there's Jim, our children, their children.

July 4th, 1965, so this is not long

after they climbed Kennedy and became fast friends.

There's John Glenn, and I think my brother,

Scott Whittaker. This is a really pretty photo.

I don't know if the family's ever even seen this,

that's Ethel and Bobby on the river float.

You know, all those river trips,

I don't care how famous the people were,

we all threw our sleeping bags down on the gravel

and went to sleep.

♪ Seen my old friend Bobby

♪ Can you tell me where he's gone ♪

Then they were jet setting, they were in Sun Valley,

that's Andy Williams, here's Andy Williams drunk,

mugging Ethel Kennedy.

Bobby Kennedy and my mom, Blanche.

Them partying on Onassis' yacht.

Dad and Ethel, 1971, at Christmas somewhere,

it looks like a crappy house, it must have been ours.

♪ Abraham, Martin and John

You were kind of his way

to get away from all the stress.

In a sense, yeah, that's true.

And that's something that he said to me.

I'm announcing today my candidacy

for the presidency of the United States.

I run because it is now unmistakably clear

that we can change these disastrous,

divisive policies only by changing the men

who are now making them.

You have my father, that comes from a retail background,

he loves the outdoors, and he said he didn't know

he was a Democrat until he met Bobby Kennedy.

To not know you're a Democrat

until you're 35 sounds crazy to me.

Jim was not comfortable being political.

In fact, he told me one time, the only place

he was comfortable was standing next to a tree.

He had a high profile after the Everest climb,

even higher profile after that Kennedy climb.

And so for my father, that took his advocacy

and politics up a notch.

Jim Whittaker was the last person

I'd ever think would become involved in politics.

He just had to kind of come in from the outdoors,

and Bobby went out.

Bobby tapped dad to be his campaign manager

for Washington and Oregon.

I run to seek new policies,

policies to close the gaps that now exist

between black and white, between rich and poor,

between young and old in this country

and around the rest of the world.

Dad, Mom, Bobby, Ethel,

touring the Columbia River, and then on their way

to Portland as a campaign stop.

I was very close to Bobby, and especially

on the campaign, he always called me Madge,

never Blanche, changed my name.

There's images

where my dad's almost bodyguard esque,

this tall guy with Bobby.

There's all these amazing stories.

We just all got along,

and I'm a better person for knowing Bobby and Ethel.

I'd say that there's this notion of,

what are we doing to protect the world

that we all share, and that was not

in the American consciousness in the 1960s.

There are laws that we can pass about dumping

and throwing refuse in lakes and streams and into the air.

And I think that's what's going

to make the difference in this country.

Jim Whittaker influenced my father,

and his whole life has been about protecting our planet.

And to do that, he knew we all needed to get out

and see the place.

I think at this point, probably we're gonna end up landing

at 8,700 feet, right where Bobby Kennedy

and Jim Whittaker landed 50 years ago.

I'm so excited, this has been a long time coming,

50 years in the making.

When we were kids and we wanted

to challenge each other, we would declare an event

or an obstacle or an impossibility a Whittaker Challenge.

And if something was declared a Whittaker Challenge,

you had to try it. That tradition's been passed along

from my generation to the next, and every single one

of them is a better person as a result of it.

Tomorrow is my Whittaker Challenge.

At around 6,000 feet,

and we're a ways from .

Yeah, I think we're gonna go left here

dangerous that way,

it's actually looking pretty good.

There it is, yep, just like that.

Yep, we're .

Thank you.

I've never felt so remote,

so far away from help, so isolated

as when that helicopter took off.

Your dad, Leif and Bobby's dad,

they would have taken the route on up through here,

as well, so. Yeah?

Following into your dad's footsteps.

Nice.

Quite literally here.

Yeah, couldn't be happier.

What we're doing is our packing our sleds,

to take a few loads to the base camp.

This is the drop zone, where the helicopter is.

It's not all that ideal

'cause there's some high hanging ice up there.

So are you scared of those things up there?

No, there's not much debris down there,

but later in the summer, later in the summer,

they might warm up, start dropping like flies.

Hell, yes, I'm scared, Jesus Christ, look at them.

So the plan is, pending weather,

we'll get up in the morning,

and just take our time going up,

assessing the route as we go.

I'm thinking it's gonna take two to three hours

to get to the final steep pitch

that gets us up onto the summit plateau.

That part where your dad talked about looking down

at the exposure, and just being terrified,

wondering what he got into, I think that's

that moment on that arete up top

where you can look off one side, maybe, and--

Thanks for the reminder. See a long ways down.

That'll do a lot for the good night's sleep.

Yeah, yeah.

What else do you have to share?

Sometimes I wonder what you've gotten us into.

"Hey, Bobby, let's climb Mount Kennedy."

Sometimes I wonder why I brought Bobby on this trip.

"Hey, Bobby, I had a great idea,

"let's climb Mount Kennedy," fuck.

"It's like Mount Baker."

If you can vote one person off the team, who would it be?

Myself, no, it's, this trip is amazing.

It's swimming in mystique,

and we're drowning in personalities.

It's about 6:54 a.m., we're just getting ready

to set off for our summit bid.

Yeah, I've been thinking about this for many years,

and it's really special.

The plan is to eat some bad oatmeal

and get geared up, roped up,

and make a summit bid, pretty exciting.

Let's do it.

50 years ago, Jim Whittaker came here,

and he brought my father, to honor the Kennedy family,

and because of all the things he's done for us,

I'm here this year to honor Jim Whittaker.

You're in this place where they were.

All the history, just kept, just playing over

and over in my head, every step,

as we walk uphill, 100 feet out of camp,

1,000 feet out of camp, two hours out of camp.

I was glad we had rope lengths between us

'cause I was crying and I didn't want people to know.

An altimeter in there, kind of, sometimes.

That was an easy 800 feet.

I think the, Whittakers take big steps.

All right, Brian, we're all good.

There was a moment, kind of a realization

where it dawned on me that we had talked Chris Kennedy

into coming with us, I was concerned for his safety,

more than anything, I didn't want Chris to get hurt.

At one point, Chris was ahead of me,

and I wasn't sure what he was saying.

He kind of said something like, "I'm going in,"

or, "I'm going down," or sort of kind of tossed it off,

and he said it again, and I looked up, and I could see

what he meant was he was going into a crevasse.

I just put the line taut so he wouldn't fall far,

if he did go in, and I don't know if you've ever tried

to roll with a backpack on, but Chris did an amazing job,

but he rolled the wrong way,

and it kind of opened up even more.

So then I just said, "Screw it, I'm gonna pull him back

"and out," and so I just started reversing downhill,

and that kind of popped him out of the hazard zone,

up onto the lip.

The same scenario happened from the '65 climb,

they dropped Bobby into a crevasse, like, waist deep.

Every 50 years, we like to drop a Kennedy

in a crevasse up on Mount Kennedy, just for fun.

I fell, and I didn't die, that's about it.

We were going slow, probably

because of our inexperience.

You haven't slept, you're an emotional wreck,

Chris falls in a crevasse, we keep going.

The wind picks up, it was really windy up high.

45 mile an hour winds sweeping

across that ridge line, and we were up

at probably 12,500 feet at that point.

It was about 6:00 p.m. when we got up

to the summit plateau, people were a little intimidated

when they saw that,

and people were also already really tired.

The decision was really obvious,

we needed to turn around.

So let's talk a bit

about how you heard about the assassination,

the news surrounding that.

God, I don't know that I want to talk much about that,

that was bad.

The night of the California primary,

a few of the Kennedy people met

with a number of uncommitted delegates

in the presidential suite of the Olympic Hotel.

TV sets were on, there was gay exuberance

as the primary results came in.

A speaker was hooked up to the telephone

to broadcast the voice of Senator Kennedy.

At 11 o'clock p.m. Senator Kennedy spoke to our audience,

and asked us to help him seek his goal.

I thanked him for the call and said,

"Congratulations, Bob, keep up the good work,

"we love you."

My mother was with the campaign

and with Ethel at the Ambassador Hotel when Bobby was shot.

Jim was in Seattle when he heard

about the assassination, and he got on a plane

as fast as he could and got down there.

Got a cab to the hospital,

they were barricading the doors.

And I told them who I was, and then they let me in,

and I went up to Bobby's room.

Jim had Ethel put on a gurney

and put beside Bobby so she could hold his hand.

He was on a breathing machine, still alive,

but he wasn't gonna make it, you could tell.

He was brain dead.

And Teddy pulled the plug on the machine,

and we held Bobby, held hands and held Bobby,

and that was it.

I knelt by his bed, held his hand and Ethel's hand,

and cried for what she had lost,

for what those who knew him had lost,

and for what those that had never known him had lost.

I cried for the ones that might never say,

"I am a better man because I knew him."

♪ Mine eyes have seen the glory ♪

♪ Of the coming of the Lord

We flew back on Air Force One.

Johnson gave us the plane to fly Bobby back.

♪ Where the grapes of wrath are stored ♪

First, we lose the president,

and then we lose Robert Kennedy,

who was talking about civil rights,

he says there's a growing gap in wealth accumulation,

he's concerned about the environment,

and I guess Jim Whittaker probably sensitized him even more

than he was. Many of the same issues that are with us today.

At the church, Andy sang

without accompaniment The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

♪ Hallelujah

♪ Glory, glory

When we came out of the church,

there were thousands of people all singing

that song, as we came out with Bobby, anyway,

it was, that was tough, we lost a hell of a good guy.

♪ Marching on

I saw my father drop down on his knees

at Bobby's grave and start to cry, and I had never seen that

before, and I've never seen it since.

And so it's, here's your father,

who's also sort of a superhero,

brought to tears, it was intense.

♪ Our God is marching on

♪ Glory, glory

♪ Hallelujah

♪ Glory, glory

♪ Hallelujah

♪ Glory, glory

♪ Hallelujah

♪ His truth is marching on

You know, anybody who loses a parent,

a mother or a father, suffers greatly.

I'd say the bullet that kills the father wounds the child,

and unless you have someone like Jim Whittaker,

who can step in, who can provide those parental experiences,

who can encourage you, guide you, give you confidence,

tell you, "No, you can do this, you can accomplish that.

"The river's not too fast, that water's not too deep,

"the ocean's not too rough, the mountain's not too tall,

"you can do this," then you suffer.

And Jim Whittaker came into our lives,

and he gave us all great confidence.

♪ Glory, glory hallelujah

One piece of lead stopped a brilliant,

wonderful opportunity for the country and the world,

it just stopped it.

We lost a good man.

♪ Amen

Bobby and Dad left the tie clips up here in '65.

And I don't know, I found one in the house sometime, a while ago.

We've done what we could to honor our parents,

honor your father, my father, Jack.

pay tribute to the living, as well.

Get ourselves back safe--

I've got this.

Let's go get down safe.

Let's get out of here. Let's get down safe.

As he moved to seek the newer world,

he said, "Each time a man stands up

"for an ideal or goes to improve the lot of others,

"or strikes out against injustice,

"he sends forth a tiny ripple, the ripple of hope."

♪ I want to see a revival, yeah ♪

What we need in the United States is not division,

what we need in the United States is not hatred.

What we need in the United States is not violence

and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom

and compassion toward one another, the feeling of justice

toward those who still suffer within our country.

♪ Means my soul's survival, oh

For me, this climb was

about exploring all these different emotions,

and connecting with my brother, building a team,

and being part of an adventure, drilling down

into this beautiful history that shaped my family

and me and the Kennedys.

♪ And why am I so blind

♪ With my eyes wide open

I'm proud of my friend, I've been proud

to be his friend, to see him take on a big challenge

at a certain time of his life is impressive.

In the rapids of the Salmon River,

and drifting down the Colorado,

skiing at Sun Valley and paddling down the Hudson,

my wife and children watched the magic of Bob Kennedy,

and we grew to love him.

He gave inspiration and hope to those

of us who knew him, and even to those who did not.

We love you, Bobby.

We try to plunge ourselves

into these situations, into these depth

of challenge and loneliness and overwhelming emotions

of fear and danger in order to conquer them

in a relatively safe space, knowing that life,

without our permission, is gonna plunge us

into those same situations time and again.

And at least now we'll know how to get ourselves out.

Good job Bobby.

We didn't leave anything up there, did we?

Right on, Chris.

Thanks, Leif, thanks for everything.

Yeah, you come off of that thing,

and you can't but help having even more admiration

for your father and for mine.

That's what I was just thinking.

Incredible, that's incredible.

I mean--

I didn't think it'd be possible

to have more admiration for--

50 years ago, about this time,

there was a very impressive effort,

the mapping of Mount Kennedy.

And we have Malcolm Taylor here.

And I think it's safe to say

that maybe the Kluane National Park in Canada,

the initiative at least for that, or the groundswell

for creating that I think may have come from this project.

So a lot of good came from it,

and 50 years later, here we are back at it.

I've got a new book full of notes I'm taking,

we're still learning from the experience,

50 years later, so that's it.

And here's the result of all our effort up there

on Mount Kennedy.

I guess the wild places have a way of bringing us back

to who we are,

whether you're right here in Holderness, New Hampshire,

or whether you're in the Yukon Territory,

or the far reaches of Alaska,

it's a way of sort of bringing us home.

We are rooted in it, we are rooted in nature.

Hang on, I'm going for it.

You are on the fastest route.

You will arrive at 12:03 p.m.

Nailed it.

I hear that these documentaries can be traps

for a midlife crisis, if this is that,

I'd like it to be a special midlife crisis.

This was I think on our summit day, climbing up.

Here I am crying.

Did anybody drop in a crevasse, or I don't think--

We dropped Chris in a crevasse.

Did you?

Good.

I think for me the biggest takeaway is connecting

with you, Bobby, and-- Yeah, totally.

Reconnecting, and-- True.

Sharing that experience together,

and planning it and climbing together,

I mean, it was just fun, being in the tent,

joking around, yeah, it was--

Part of that was fun.

I mean, all the stuff we've done on our own,

but the best is having a nucleus of a close friendship.

With Bob sinking, Bob sinking knives

into the wall, throwing baseballs into the wall.

Are you proud of your sons

for what they've done?

I couldn't be more proud,

even if they didn't climb mountains,

they're wonderful human beings, and yeah,

and I couldn't be more proud of them,

that they're a credit to the human race, no question.

Please join me in welcoming the next governor

of the state of Illinois, Christopher Kennedy.

How old are you, 70, what is it, 72?

No, it's 84.

Oh! We're gonna miss ya.