Before May 12, 2022, only eight Black people had ever summited Mount Everest. The Full Circle Everest team nearly doubled that number when seven members of the all-Black expedition made it to the top of the 29,032-foot Himalayan peak.
This story first appeared in The Outsider, the premium outdoor newsletter by Jason Blevins.
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Eddie Taylor and Evan Green were two of the team members who made it to the highest point in the world. Taylor, who’s a teacher and track coach at Centaurus High School in Lafayette in addition to being a sponsored climber, told The Colorado Sun in September 2021 that he hoped reaching the summit would “have a lasting impact on our community.”
The Sun caught up with him and Green before they gave a presentation at Movement RiNo to see if they feel like it has.
Green, an accomplished Santa Fe-based photographer and videographer, smiles softly as we sit and talk at a small table near one of the bouldering areas. He rarely breaks eye contact despite the gym’s chalky chaos.
He speaks softly and thoughtfully, clearly thinking of his response to each question before answering. Taylor wears a thin red cord tied to look like a coiled climbing rope around his neck. He’s usually grinning and always seems to be on the verge of laughter. He glances around at the climbers training, stretching and bouldering around us as he discusses his time on top of the world and everything that came after.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
The Colorado Sun: How long have you both been climbing, and when did you start?
Eddie Taylor: I’ve been climbing since after college, so about 12 years now. A friend basically asked me to come out and belay her. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but obviously she was desperate…so I went out, and we went climbing. She gave me a Grigri (a belay device that feeds out rope when the belayer pulls the brake lever back), showed me the basics and said, “All right, if I fall, whatever you do, don’t squeeze,” you know, because obviously you don’t want to do that on the Grigri. She sent her route and gave me the quickdraws afterwards, and I climbed the next route. And that was my intro into climbing.
Evan Green: I started more formally climbing in Denver when I moved here in 2014, so it’s been 10 years now. I was born in Queens, but I only lived there for a year or two before my family moved to the Dallas area. I was an Eagle Scout in Texas, so I got into the outdoors that way. After college when I had a little more free time, I started getting back into backpacking more and started exploring the mountains. And then I was fortunate enough to move to Denver through my job — they had an opening in an office out here, so I moved from Ohio to Denver. I already had that passion for the outdoors and stuff, so I just started exploring the mountains and different trailheads and things like that.
The Sun: Who were some of your climbing role models? Did you have any Black climbers to look up to?
Taylor: No, I didn’t. I met Phil Henderson about two years before the Everest thing, and before I climbed with Phil I could count on one hand the number of Black climbers I climbed with. One was my sister, one was some random friend, and then the other three were people I met in Kenya — we were kind of showing them around. So that’s really it; I didn’t really have any other black role models or people to really look up to.
Green: Not particularly. Kai Lightner wasn’t on the scene or anything, and I wasn’t really aware of Phil Henderson, who led the expedition, until later on. So…not so much, no. I don’t know if I really followed the personalities of climbing. My take on it was always more along the lines of, “there are rocks, there’s Mountain Project, you read the descriptions and you try to get out there.” I was really lucky to find a community. I just moved in with random people here in Denver, and they were interested in climbing too. So I had some people that I could go to the gym with and belay and hang out with, and that was really helpful.
The Sun: How does it feel to know that you’re the role models for the next generation of climbers of color?
Taylor: Honestly, I don’t think about it that much. I go out and climb. It’s cool that it inspires other people, but ultimately climbing is something I spend a lot of time doing because I enjoy it. Maybe that sounds kind of bad, but it’s the truth. I’m a high school teacher and a track coach, and giving back to the community is definitely super important to me, but climbing has always been something that’s been something that I do to release stress and whatnot. But I think it’s really cool to combine those passions — the passion to help people and the passion to get people climbing. The Everest trip was the context for that.
Green: That was the real reason I wanted to go on the expedition. It’s just really cool to be representing and providing the role model I never had, and to be able to inspire other people and show what’s possible.
The Sun: You hoped that the Everest summit would open doors for increased diversity in the outdoors, and in the mountains specifically. Has it?
Taylor: It’s hard to tell. I mean, I used to be a scientist, and now I’m a science teacher, so technically you can’t quantifiably tell how much change it’s actually made. But anecdotally, I think it’s made a lot of changes. When I was growing up, I didn’t even know what Everest was, and I didn’t really know what climbing was. All I knew was that a bunch of people went to a mountain and died, and that was just because of the movie “Into Thin Air.” A teacher recently reached out to me because she had a kid in her class ask, “Are only Black people allowed to climb mountains?” That’s obviously a very naive little kid thing to say, but it proves that there’s a shift in the idea of what people can and cannot do. There are certain careers, professions and activities that you feel like you could never do. We wanted more people to be able to see themselves in us. One of my good friends who has no interest in mountains looked at a picture of us and was like, “Hey, that guy looks like my dad.” If you can see your dad doing something like that, you’ll probably feel like you could do it, or it’ll at least give you the opportunity to do it versus seeing it as something that you can’t do at all.
Green: Yeah, I do. There’s been a lot of positivity and publicity around it. Eddie and I were doing all the social media stuff, so we saw everyone commenting after we made the summit. People have been stoked on it, and as far as we can tell, it’s been inspiring more people. But it’s also one of those things that’s going to be a lot more long-term; it’s not like we’re going to see an immediate rush of people going out. It’s a small piece of the whole puzzle, but I think we definitely helped move things forward.
The Sun: How can you tell?
Taylor: I think what’s really cool is when we do disability events and stuff, you’re seeing more people showing up. And honestly, it’s not just Black people. Our expedition resonated with a lot of different groups—marginalized people, non-marginalized people. We just talked at the Museum of Nature and Science, and we had 300-400 people of all demographics there. There were young Latino women that were there just to hear our stories. Obviously you want to inspire your own community, but it’s cool that this project resonates with other communities and helps people see what they can or can’t do.
Green: Full Circle now does a lot of clinics at the Ouray Ice Festival, and a lot of times it was just Phil. He started the (Full Circle) group because he was the only Black person at the Ice Fest a lot of times. He saw Manoah Ainuu and Fred Campbell — who are North Face athletes — and brought them into the mix. Now, there are anywhere from 20 to 30 Black people at some of the Ice Fests, so it’s a lot more diverse. So we know it’s working just from seeing that, and then when people like Phil teach clinics to give people new skills that they can then pass on to their communities, it just kind of keeps rolling and rolling full circle.
The Sun: What are the next steps toward keeping that mission alive and thriving?
Taylor: Phil started this nonprofit called Full Circle Expeditions, which is a very concrete step toward meeting people where they’re at, bringing them out and giving them experiences outside. It’s a collective of a lot of people in a lot of different areas doing things to increase diversity and representation in the outdoors, and I think it’s increasing at a pretty ok rate. The goal isn’t to make every single person of color or marginalized person a climber, or to have them go to Everest, but I think everyone should have the option and the opportunity to pursue anything they want to. In 1910, there were no female doctors. Women didn’t even look at the medical profession; the only thing they believed they could be was a nurse. But now, when you look at the rates of people who are admitted to med school, that’s completely different. I think that’s just like any sport—you want to be able to say, “Hey, I have an interest in going outside. I have an interest in climbing,” and there’s nothing stopping you because you see other people that look like you doing it.
Green: Doing events like this, engaging the community and showing that we’re here. It’s also important to inspire other people and show them that climbing’s something you can check out if you’re interested. Maybe you’ll like it, and if not, that’s really cool too. But keeping those doors open, making people feel more welcome, and opening peoples’ eyes to everyone in the outdoor community is what we’re trying to do.