First all-Black team of climbers heading to Everest

Nearly 70 years ago, New Zealand explorer Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first confirmed climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak. Since then, just over 10,000 others have completed the feat. Of those, only a handful have been Black and only one a Black American. In May, under the name of Full Circle Everest Expedition, a team of nine, highly qualified Black climbers intend to change that.

The brainchild of team leader Phillip Henderson, 58, the project is about “summiting Everest first,” and “everything else second.”

But with 30 years of climbing, mountaineering and working in the outdoors industry, often as the only Black person in any group, Henderson sees the Everest expedition as a way to bring diversity and change to his chosen field.  Read the entire Washington Post article here.