In 2019 Full Circle began organizing its effort to make history as the first team of black mountaineers to summit Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. It would prove to be a long and arduous journey.
The Full Circle Everest team was the brainchild of our director, Philip Henderson, Fred Campbell, and Manoah Ainuu (pictured from upper right to left). These three professional mountaineers dreamt of making an all-black team that could take the summit of Everest and they made it happen!
The feat had not been attempted by an all-black team before. Given the difficulties of access and costs associated with mountaineering, it took some effort to find climbers of color with the mountaineering resume that would make the expedition a solid fit.
FCE maintained a collective and individualized training schedule. This gave us the opportunity to get to know each better and prepare ourselves as a team for the expedition. The adjacent video was taken in Hyalite Canyon during our first training meet-up.
During the months of training and preparing for the expedition, I began using autoethnography to write a memoir. The Sad Machine is comprised of my journals from training and the Full Circle expedition. It features poetry and essays inspired by my experiences, while enduring the process it took to summit Mt. Everest.
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