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PHOTOGRAPH BY PEMBA SHARWA, FULL CIRCLE EVEREST
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By Starlight Williams
At least 4,000 people have summited Mount Everest—at 29,032 feet it’s the world’s tallest mountain—since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reached the peak in 1953. But only 10 of those climbers were Black.
The Full Circle Everest Expedition team (pictured above), composed entirely of Black climbers, plans to double that number during the 2022 climbing season. It wasn’t until 2003 that South African Sibusiso Vilane became the first Black man to summit. Three years later, Sophia Danenberg became the first and only Black American and Black woman to do so, an event that went practically unnoticed at the time.
So far, an all-Black expedition team has yet to summit the peak known in Tibetan as Chomolungma, or “Goddess Mother of the World.” This groundbreaking climbing team hopes its success will change the perception of mountaineering and persuade more Black people to embrace wilderness adventures. Now, the team is waiting at Everest Base Camp in Nepal (pictured below) for the right weather conditions to summit and make history.
Read the full story here.
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