For the first time ever, an all-Black team will attempt to scale all 29,032 feet of Mount Everest. The Full Circle Everest expedition will make history as the first Black climbing team to attempt to summit the highest mountain on earth. The first Black woman to scale Everest did so in 2019.
Phil Henderson, an experienced mountaineer, will lead the nine-person expedition. He hopes the expedition to the top of Mount Everest will encourage people of color to not just dream big, but simply get outside. He’s led an all-African American team to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. And for decades has been a quiet force in expanding the outdoor industry’s reach to overlooked communities.
“From gardening to bird watching to climbing Everest, the sky is really the limit when it comes to people just getting outside and really understanding the benefits of spending time in nature,” Henderson says.
Full Circle has set up a GoFundMe in order to fund the expedition, and it aims to raise $50,000 of the overall budget by Oct. 1, 2021, to obtain permits and hire a support team.
