How Black Climbers Are Closing the Adventure Gap | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

Earlier this year, James Edward Mills did something I've always wanted to do. He flew to Nepal and directed the base of Mount Everest. I did uh travel with the team, um from Kathmandu to Lukla. Then we basically walked from Lukla to Everest Base Camp. Wow! Man, was that your first time at Base Camp? It was my first time to Asia. Um, yeah definitely the first time I've been to Everest Base Camp.

James is a journalist who's covered the outdoors for decades, and he's been following a climbing expedition called Full Circle Everest. Okay, Mount Everest, obviously a big deal, tallest mountain on earth, more than 29,000 feet above sea level. James wasn't going for the summit, just Base Camp, but even that's no small task. Everest Base Camp is at 17,500 feet, and at that altitude, you're right on the edge of what the human body can handle for any length of time.

I think we got like a light rain on the way up. You know, it wasn't anywhere near as cold as I thought it was going to be. Um, it was every bit as steep as I knew it would be, and lack of oxygen is a very real thing. Hundreds of people attempt to climb Everest every year. Most of them, including Full Circle Everest, rely on Sherpas and other local people as guides.

I've always heard Base Camp as like a mini U.N. People come from all over the world to chase a common goal, and there's usually a little competitive tension in the air but also a sense of a shared journey. James says the Full Circle team really felt like everyone was in it together.

We had the Puja ceremony, which basically is the blessing for the client, basically asking for spiritual permission to make the climb to the summit. Um, the environment was festive; it was jubilant. You know, I mean we had, you know, people come up and share in all the food and beer and alcohol and just having, you know, a great time chanting and singing and dancing and really having a celebration.

By now, there's a long list of Mount Everest firsts. The first-ever summit in 1953 by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary. The first summit by Americans ten years later, which was sponsored by National Geographic, by the way. The first summit without supplemental oxygen: Italian Reinhold Messner and Austrian Peter Habeler. The first in winter: two Polish climbers, Krzysztof Wielicki and Leszek Cichy. The first to ski from the summit all the way down: Davor Karnis from Slovenia.

Yeah, I know all this seems nuts, but it seems like if you name it, someone's done it. Yet, there was one first that still hadn't been claimed, which the Full Circle team had their eyes on. The first black climber summited in 2003: Sibusiso Vilane from South Africa. But a full team of black climbers had never reached the roof of the world. And, not unlike every representation when it comes to, you know, mountaineering, we're always going to count the first American, the first Italian, you know, the first Chilean. I mean, we're always going to count this but we never took the time to count the number of black people, you know.

I think that it was very important that we did in such a way that it was representative of how we go about defining ourselves, not only nationally but culturally. James knows of six black climbers who've reached the summit. By other estimates, it could be as many as ten or twelve. Either way, that's a tiny fraction of the thousands of people who made it to the top.

So, I personally felt that it was really important, you know, that we established a bigger, better conversation around representation of black people when it comes to high-level wilderness adventure, specifically the biggest prize, which is the summit of Everest. I'm Peter Gwynn and this is Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world.

This week, we go inside Full Circle Everest, a group of black climbers trying to make history on the world's highest mountain. We'll learn about the adventure gap that keeps many people of color away from the great outdoors, and we'll follow one climber who wants to set an example for budding black explorers to follow.

We'll have more after the break, but before we get on with this episode, thanks for listening! If you like what you hear, consider a National Geographic subscription and get exclusive access to stories published daily, curated newsletters, and 130 years of archives. Subscribe today at natgeo.com/exploremore.

For more than 30 years, James Edward Mills has been a wilderness guide, an outfitter, and then a journalist covering the outdoors. And like a lot of outdoorsy people, it all started when he was a kid.

Yeah, I grew up in Los Angeles, California, and despite the fact that it's a very urban area, we actually have quite a bit of nature. You know, as a kid, it was a monthly activity to go camping or skiing or climbing with my brothers and the other boys in our scout troop. And so, as a kid growing up, despite having had very many positive experiences myself as a black kid growing up in Southern California, there weren't very many of us.

James says there also weren't many black outdoor role models to look up to, so through his organization, The Joy Trip Project, which covers the outdoor recreation industry, he focuses on stories that show those role models. He covered the first all-black team to attempt to summit Alaska's Denali, the highest mountain in North America. At the time of this expedition in 2013, the National Park Service estimated that less than two percent of park visitors were black, and relative to our percentage of the population, that's egregiously low.

One of the things that I realized is that there seemed to be a technical divide between who spends time in nature and who doesn't. James coined a term for this: the adventure gap. Put simply, black Americans are less likely to spend time in nature. There's many reasons for this, but for starters, there's a long history of white people preventing people of color from enjoying the outdoors.

In 1934, nearly two decades after the creation of the National Park System, Franklin Roosevelt gave a speech in Glacier National Park where he said that, quote, “There is nothing so American as our national parks.” He added that the fundamental idea behind the parks is that the country belongs to the people. He went on to say that the parks help enrich the lives of all of us. But when he said this, Jim Crow segregation extended to the outdoors. Black travelers could be turned away with signs that said “For Whites Only.”

On paper, all National Park facilities were desegregated in 1945, but in reality, it took years for some parks to welcome everyone. It's ironic because, so in 1953, when Sir Edmund Hillary summited Everest, black people in America couldn't visit national parks. And so, you have this beginning of the modern mountaineering era and you have very limited representation of black people in outdoor recreation because of Jim Crow segregation, you know, because of very clear cultural social prohibitions that prevented this access to nature.

But even after it ended, segregation cast a long shadow, and many black adventurers are still trying to stake out a place in the outdoors. One person who's made a mark is a climber named Phil Henderson. Phil grew up in Southern California, a lot like I did. Um, you know, he grew up and had, um, you know, really great experiences in the outdoors but also, you know, he felt that he was not given his due as a black person in the outdoors.

Ten years ago, Phil was actually part of a National Geographic expedition to Everest. He's also led climbs of Denali and Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro. I remember he told me a story once about, um, you know, working in a gear shop. A gentleman's in the store looking for some backcountry skis. Phillip walks up to him and asks if he can help. The guy says no, and then he goes to ask someone else for help. That salesperson comes to Phillip for advice because he knows more about backcountry skiing than he did.

Now this person assumed that as a black person, Phillip couldn't possibly know anything about backcountry skis or mountaineering, but he’s had decades of experience in this. A few years ago, Phil told James about his new big idea. He wanted to send black climbers to Everest, and not just one or two of them, but a whole team. If all went well, his team would almost double the number of black people who'd reached the roof of the world.

He basically invited me to help to document the story of the expedition, and truthfully, I became an embedded journalist on this project, and that included being involved from the very beginning. So, despite the fact that I wasn't actually a climber on this expedition, I was trying to play a role to help guide its course while still reporting on it.

One thing I've learned about Mount Everest is that unless your name is Reinhold Messner or Goran Kropp, epic Swedish adventurer—look him up—you don't climb the world's highest mountain alone. There are Sherpas hauling gear and oxygen bottles and setting ropes. You've got staff at Base Camp cooking hot meals and making sure all the gear works. You've got experts sending weather forecasts and medical advice, and sometimes you just need support—someone who's got your back on this all-consuming endeavor.

As Phil Henderson started putting together his team of black climbers, he heard from Conrad Anker, an old friend and a world-class mountaineer. Conrad has summited Everest three times, including leading the Nat Geo expedition Phil was a part of, and Conrad has made it a point to give back to the climbing community. He established the Khumbu Climbing Center in Nepal, a vocational school that helps train local guides in professional mountaineering techniques and wilderness first aid.

All roads seem to lead through Conrad Anker. So how did Conrad sort of get involved in this whole expedition? It's funny that you put it that way, because I've known Conrad for over 30 years. But one of the things that Conrad has been really supportive of is making the outdoors more accessible to more people. You know, I think that he has recognized his personal privilege but also, you know, perhaps the responsibility of making sure that the outdoors is more accessible to more people.

One of the things that I really, you know, respect him for is he kept his role exclusively advisory. You know, he offered support and encouragement, you know, when someone needed to be persuaded to support the expedition he put in a good word for us, but he allowed this expedition to happen organically. Philip Henderson did all the heavy lifting, you know, and this ultimately made this an expedition that was 100 percent person of color led.

How did they go about putting together a team? I mean, you can know a lot of people, but climbing Mount Everest is sort of a whole another project. So, how did they go about doing it? Well, you know, and it's really interesting because, you know, there are a lot of climbing festivals. You know, and after a while, you know, you kind of have this camaraderie circle because inevitably, you know, when you see a black climber at an event like this, and you're a black climber, you're going to connect.

You know, you're going to gravitate towards one another. But then again, of course, you know who has the skill and expertise to do vertical ice climbing? It's a very varied skill set, you know, so there's not very many people who can do that. So, you start asking around: So, you know, who's good at ice climbing? Coming up, Phil Henderson finds an ice climber.

We'll meet one of the members of the Full Circle expedition and learn how he went from growing up in Brooklyn to scaling frozen waterfalls. [Music]

Putting together a high-altitude climbing team is a tricky business. First, you have to have people with specialized skills who are extremely physically fit and who can work together under really intense pressure. And you have to be ready to trust them with your life.

And in Dom Mullins, Phil found one of his guys. Dom is an amazing character, and um, he's, you know, one of the few climbers that I didn't know before we put the expedition together. Excuse me here because I just got my food served, so I'll be sipping a little soup while we're talking.

This is Dom. When James reached him, Dom was in the Himalayas training for the climbing season. Dom took the winding road to becoming a mountaineer. He grew up in Brooklyn— not many mountains around Brooklyn. And he enlisted in the Army after high school. At the age of 19, he was a recruit in the U.S. Army on September 11th, 2001, and he literally, you know, in basic training was plunged into the Iraq War.

Um, and was deployed originally to New York City to patrol the site of the fallen Twin Towers. But he was actually among the very first ground troops that were sent to Baghdad and Fallujah. After his discharge, Dom became an anti-war activist. He worked as a staffer in the U.S. Senate, and then he earned a Ph.D. at the City University of New York studying sociology.

His military network led him to a group called Veterans Expeditions, a non-profit that organizes outdoor trips for vets. Dom started climbing mountains with the group in Colorado, and he realized there was a whole world he knew nothing about.

I didn't have an understanding of the ceiling, basically, of this sort of activity—something that I've fallen in love with thereafter, which is ice climbing. I didn't even know that that existed at the time. You know, I grew up in Brooklyn; I never even seen a frozen waterfall, much less thought about the fact that waterfalls freeze, you know what I'm saying?

And I attended various clinics that Veterans Expeditions had on rock climbing, on ice climbing, on mountaineering, glacier travel. I just continued to attend their clinics until eventually, in like 2015, an opportunity to join a Denali expedition that they were hosting came about. On that 2015 expedition, Dom reached the summit of Denali, the highest point in North America, more than 20,000 feet above sea level.

Now he had a taste of extreme mountaineering, and one little taste wasn't enough. In climber jargon, Denali is one of the Seven Summits, the list of highest peaks on each continent. After Dom conquered one of the seven, he started to wonder what his next challenge would be.

And it didn't take him long to find the answer. You know, in just even conversation with people, especially people who had their eyes set on the Seven Summits or whatever, they're like, “Oh wow, you did Denali. That's like one of the hardest of the Seven Summits. You know, next would be Everest.” And I was like, “Wow, that's a very interesting prospect.”

And then because of my relationship with Veterans Expeditions and heading out to highlight canyon every so often, every year to ice climb, I had the opportunity to make friends with Conrad Anker. And then Conrad dropped a little bug in my ear about the possibility of this, and I was like, “Wow, that would be amazing. You know, this is feasible.”

In the end, Phil recruited nine members to join him on the Full Circle team, including Dom. In all, there were nine black Americans and one Kenyan, ranging in age from 26 to 62. But remember how I said nobody climbs Everest alone? The backbone of practically all Everest expeditions is the local people, particularly the Sherpa. They hold the gear and supplies, set up Base Camp, cook the meals, set ropes, and guide the climbers all the way to the summit. Basically, they are the lifelines in one of Earth's most hostile environments.

For many years, most Sherpas working on Mount Everest didn't get their due. Other than maybe Tenzing Norgay's stories about the world's highest mountain, basically treated them as invisible. But now, Nepali mountaineers are showing the world how skilled they are. Many have opened outfitting businesses and take climbers and trekkers on expeditions throughout the Himalaya. And last year, an all-Nepali team was the first to reach the summit of K2, the world's second highest peak and widely considered the most dangerous. And they did it during winter— a feat many thought was impossible.

Nepalese people are amazing. Sherpas are amazing. I've met some really strong Nepalese climbers that really inspire me. When you look at Sherpa here in the Himalaya, you're like, you know these people are hardy. They've survived a lot, man, and they're really resourceful. Well, you know, what does that sound like? That reminds you of black people in the United States. Hardy people; they’ve been through a lot, and they're crazy resourceful.

So, you know, that's the same type of representation that I'm cultivating for myself and hopefully contributing for black people in the United States for how Nepalese people view them. So the Full Circle team made sure that the Sherpa were included in the story. Like, for example, Pemba Sherpa, who was one of the photographers on the expedition, had been on Everest to summit four times prior to this expedition.

You know, so he had had a long experience, but what's interesting is that he has an interest in becoming a photographer and a filmmaker. And so, this is actually an opportunity for him to work on this project with us to raise his profile. You know, and so now his pictures with this expedition are being seen literally all over the world.

In April, the Full Circle team was in Base Camp preparing for their big push to the summit. Climbing Everest actually takes several weeks. You go through a series of climbs and descents to get used to the altitude. By this time, James was already back in Wisconsin and was getting text messages from the team on their progress.

And when the ten climbers finally set off on their summit attempt, he hung on every update. I was really pleased to hear that they actually had a target weather window so that they could summit on May 12th. And the fact that the weather was so well predicted—that, you know, five days before the actual summit date, they knew that this was going to be their window of opportunity.

Everyone was climbing strong; everybody was in good physical condition. So did they encounter any obstacles? Like, I mean, other than that, it's Mount Everest. Altitude is, you know, will kill you alone, etc., etc. But were there any sort of setbacks or dramatic moments that you remember hearing about?

That's just it. None. I mean, there are no moments of trauma or anxiety or any, at least, stuff that they've shared with me so far. So tell me, James, where were you when you heard they finally summited?

You know, I'm sure I was either at my desk at home or maybe at the gym or something like that. I mean, it's one of those things where it's like birthing twins—did they all come out okay? Some people will climb faster than others. Some people will summit; some people will stay at the high camp and then summit later. So I'm literally waiting for dispatches one at a time as people are coming through. And I mean, as anyone will tell you, getting to the zone is only halfway to finish the expedition; you've got to get back safely.

In the end, seven of the ten Full Circle team members, assisted by Sherpa, made it to the summit and into the history books. And most importantly, every member of the team came home safely. Now that a whole team of black climbers has reached the top of Mount Everest, James hopes the expedition sends a simple message: the outdoors is for you too.

Here's how Dom Mullins put it: I think it does matter, particularly because in the sport of mountaineering, people of African descent are underrepresented. You know, and underrepresented is a euphemistic word to describe how scarce black people really are in the sport. So I think that by representing black people dedicated to achieving something like this exhibits a positive representation for black people who may be interested in the outdoors or who may be, you know, just developing their skills in the outdoors and make them feel like, you know, that's a space for them as well. It's a recreative space; it's a professional space for black people to aspire to as well.

When I talked to James, he was in Denver at one of the biggest outdoor retail trade shows. He wants to help gear companies reach black consumers. It's not that everyone has to climb Mount Everest; he just wants people to explore a neighborhood trail or a park. At the trade show, he was with Phil Henderson and two other Full Circle climbers. People are stopping them in the aisles, you know, congratulating them. You know, they're posing for pictures, and one gentleman in particular, you know, said to Philip, you know, “Thank you for what you're doing for the culture.”

That level and degree of representation is critical because it's demonstrated to an entire generation of black men and women and their children that there are no limits to the things that they can do in the outdoors.

In the 1920s, a reporter asked British explorer George Mallory why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, and Mallory gave a famous answer: He said, “Because it is there.” The Full Circle team climbed Everest not only because the mountain is there, but because they are here too. And the next generation of black explorers is watching.

If you like what you hear and you want to support more content like this, please rate and review us in your podcast app and consider a National Geographic subscription. That's the best way to support Overheard. Go to natgeo.com/exploremore to subscribe.

You can also keep exploring with more stories in our show notes. We've got pictures of the Full Circle team as they climb to Everest and check out James's podcast, The Joy Trip Project. He also has an extended interview with Dom Mullins, so you can go deep inside the mind of a mountain climber with a really interesting backstory. You can also learn about how people are closing the adventure gap and read an article by James about how the National Park Service could make parks more welcoming for people of color.

Also, if you want to experience what it's like to actually stand on the summit of Mount Everest, we've got you covered. A couple of years ago, we used panoramic drone photographs to create a 360-degree view from the top of the mountain. It's the next best thing to actually being there, and you don't even have to strap on an oxygen bottle.

That's all on the show notes; they're right there in your podcast app. [Music]

This week's episode of Overheard is produced by senior producer Jacob Pinter. Our producers are Kyrie Douglas and Elana Strauss. Our senior producers include Brian Gutierrez. Our senior editor is Eli Chen. Our manager of audio is Carla Wills. Our executive producer of audio is Davar Ardellan. Our fact-checkers are Robin Palmer and Julie Beer. Our photo editor is Julie Howe. Ted Woods sound designed this episode. Ponsdale Sue composed our theme music. This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners. The National Geographic Society is committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world and has funded the work of James Edward Mills. Whitney Johnson is the director of visuals and immersive experiences. Nathan Lump is National Geographic's editor-in-chief, and I'm your host, Peter Gwynn. See you all next time in the great outdoors. [Music] [Music]