Mar. 25, 1965 | RFK Climbs Mount Kennedy

Mar. 25, 1965 - Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) fell through a crevasse when an ice bridge went out from under him on Mt. Kennedy yesterday when he was about 900 feet from the ice-capped summit, he revealed today.
He dropped through to his chest before the 50-foot rope linking him and James Whittaker, the climb leader, slowed the fall, enabling the Senator to spread his arms across the top of the narrow crevasse.
Kennedy revealed this and other details of the climb while en route to Seattle from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, aboard a Royal Canadian Air Force plane. The Senator arrived in Seattle this evening on the first leg of his flight home.
He said the party crossed many crevasses on the assault of the 13,900-foot mountain named by the Canadian government for his brother, President John F. Kennedy. But he fell into only one. “They weren’t more than 200 or 300 feet deep,” he said.
Kennedy also revealed that he removed the flat he had planted on the summit bearing the Kennedy family crest. He did so, he said, because it would have quickly disappeared.

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