George Whitmore (mountain climber)

George William Whitmore (February 8, 1931 – January 1, 2021) was an American mountain climber and conservationist. He was a member of the first team to summit El Capitan in 1958.
Background.
Whitmore was trained as a pharmacist at the University of California, San Francisco.
He had served in the Air Force as an aeromedical evacuation officer and later worked as a pharmacist. He was a lifelong environmental activist on behalf of wilderness preservation, such as promoting the establishment of the Kaiser Wilderness in 1976. He lobbied for passage of the California Wilderness Act of 1984, which he later described as establishing "the longest stretch of de facto wilderness in the lower 48 states." He died in Fresno, California on January 1, 2021, from COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic in California.