This spring, Eddie Taylor will be one of the climbers making history on the first all-Black team to attempt to summit Mount Everest.
This spring, Eddie Taylor will be one of the climbers making history on the first all-Black team to attempt to summit Mount Everest. Their trek is called The Full Circle Everest Expedition. By day, Eddie is a high school Chemistry teacher and track coach in Colorado, but before work and on the weekends, he’s out scaling rock faces or ice climbing frozen waterfalls. Now, he is embarking on a new type of adventure — Eddie, eight other Black climbers, and two support staff will start their two month trip to Everest. In this episode, he talks about their preparations and what it takes to climb the tallest mountain in the world.
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Eddie Taylor: People are like, why would your team do Everest? Why would you do these things? And this is a mountain that everybody knows. And I think this didn't start out as a trip about representation, but if you have a team of all- climbers going to climb mountain, how can you not talk about representation and the fact that there's only been 10 Black people who have summited out of thousands upon thousands?
Shelby Stanger: In April 2022, a group of climbers will make history as the first all Black team to attempt to summit Mount Everest. Their Trek is called The Full Circle Expedition, and Eddie Taylor is one of the participants. Eddie lives in Colorado and he's pretty entrenched in the climbing community. Before work and on the weekends, Eddie's out scaling rock faces, or ice climbing frozen waterfalls. Even though Eddie has done some pretty no earthy outdoor trips on some of the biggest mountains in the world, he'd never thought much about climbing Everest. That all changed when he met Full Circle Expedition leader Phil Henderson at the dog park.
Eddie Taylor: It was in the morning before we were going ice climbing, and I just had to get my puppy some exercise before he was cooped up all day. And we chatted a little bit, and then I saw him here or there over that weekend. And basically, before I left the last day, we ran into him as he was leaving the park and he asked for my number, and a few weeks later, we decided to ski together and I got to know him a lot better then. And then he told me about this Everest trip. And initially, I wasn't really that interested in it, but basically after that weekend of skiing with them, I decided there was no way I could not be a part of this thing.
Shelby Stanger: That's really interesting. Can I ask why you said no initially?
Eddie Taylor: So I have a bunch of other things that I'm interested in more like the rock climbing realm, as well as ... it's a big mountain expedition, it's very resource intensive. It's very pricey for a teacher. If you look at the average expedition costs, they're pretty intense.
Shelby Stanger: It's like 50 to 100k, right?
Eddie Taylor: Exactly.
Shelby Stanger: That's expensive. I want to talk to you about that because I think that's really intimidating. There's a lot of things about Everest that are intimidating, but the price tag, I think is one of the biggest hindrances.
Eddie Taylor: Yeah. There's a price tag aspect of it. There's a danger aspect of it. And then there's a physical aspect of it. And so you look at those three things and it's something that I wasn't looking to do, basically.
Shelby Stanger: There were a lot of reasons to say no, but getting to know Phil and hearing more about his goals for the trip convinced Eddie that it was something he wanted to do. Joining Full Circle was an opportunity for Eddie and for other Black climbers to create and share their story. That's why the team is bringing a film crew along to document the journey. After years of preparation and fundraising, Eddie plus eight other Black climbers and two support staff will start their two month trip to Everest on April 1st. I'm Shelby Sanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Shelby Stanger: Before preparing for Everest trip, Eddie was an active climber, but he did consider himself a professional athlete. Eddie works as a high school chemistry teacher and a track coach. When he is not working, Eddie and his wife Anna take any chance they get to go rock climbing, or hiking in the mountains near their home outside of Boulder, Colorado. Being athletic and loving the outdoors always came pretty naturally to Eddie.
Shelby Stanger: So did you grow up in an outdoorsy family?
Eddie Taylor: I grew up with just my mom. Well, I visited my dad in summers in Illinois, but I can't really say I came from an outdoorsy family, but just the places we lived. We lived in the Navajo reservation, and we lived in Gallup, New Mexico, which is on the edge of the reservation. Those are just things that people did there, and the things to see were to go camping on the weekends and go hiking. And so that's like we all got into it together, I'd say.
Shelby Stanger: Awesome. What did your mom do for work?
Eddie Taylor: My mom was a dentist for the Indian Health Service. It's a branch of the government where they work on different reservations and provide healthcare for the different native American populations.
Shelby Stanger: That's so cool. So you grew up on reservations?
Eddie Taylor: Yeah.
Shelby Stanger: What was that like?
Eddie Taylor: I've spent a lot of time navigating different spaces. I'll say that in terms of like, when I lived in Minnesota, I was one of two Black people in my high school, and primarily a white high school. And then when I lived in Arizona on the Navajo reservation, there were three people who weren't Navajo. And so to the point where, I don't remember what grade I was in, but I remember they put me in kindergarten level Navajo class because I didn't know how to speak Navajo.
Eddie Taylor: And so I've navigated those spaces growing up in different areas where most of the time I've always been the only one there, but I think that's also helped me be successful in teaching where it's 2% Black people. In climbing where when we were doing the research and it was, the AAC says, I think it's 1% of all climbers are Black. So I think that's helped me be successful. And that's one thing that I learned early on by living in these different places and moving around quite a bit.
Shelby Stanger: Well, that's awesome. Let's flash forward. In college, I read that you were a decathlete, that's a no joke sport. You got to be the biggest badass to be a decathlete. Tell me a little bit about how you got into decathlon in college, and maybe just for people who don't know what is it?
Eddie Taylor: The decathlon's an event in track and field where basically it's all the events. You do 10 of them, you do five one day, five the next day. It's not really a big event in high school, but when you go to the college level and Olympic level it's pretty competitive. And so I got into that basically when I graduated high school, I was done with sports and I went to University of Colorado because I wanted to be near the mountains and be outside and ... college, you move in, you meet all these new people.
Eddie Taylor: I randomly met my friend Javan from Hawaii. He was a recruited decathlete and we were just chatting, and I was like, I did track in high school, and he was like, I'm doing track now. And we were talking about times and marks and whatnot. And he was like, wait, why aren't you doing track here? And I told him I was like, I wasn't cut out for college sports or whatnot. And anyways, he just kept being in my ear, he talked to his coach, and one day they invited me out. And then basically after the first couple days, she told me, if you can hit these marks and you can do well all fall, then I'm going to give you a spot on the team, because I want you to be here. That was cool. And after that first season ... actually, after the second season, I earned a scholarship and that was the end of the rest of my college career, basically.
Shelby Stanger: How did you transition from running to decathlon to rock climbing?
Eddie Taylor: Going back to my track career when I was done. I was competing a little bit after I graduated, but I was finding that for me personally, it was pretty hard to train by myself. And I live in Boulder, Colorado where there's tons of rock climbers, mountain climbers, ice climbing everywhere, and I didn't really know much about it.
Eddie Taylor: The first time I went climbing, a friend just asked me if I wanted to go climbing. And I was like, I have no gear. And somehow she figured out a way to get me gear. And we went outside to Dream Canyon, which is right next to Boulder Canyon. And she was pretty experienced, so she led the route and then I followed it, and then the next route she gave me the gear and was like, all right, it's your lead.
Eddie Taylor: And luckily it was a pretty easy route and whatnot, but I learned really quickly. I don't know once I did it once, I just wanted to keep doing it and really enjoyed it. Because I was still competing in track at that time, and what happens with track is like ... I was primarily pole vaulting, and so you jump 16 feet, and then you jump 17 feet, and then whatever. But it takes a long time to make those improvements, very incremental improvements. Where climbing it was like, every single route you did was a success. Maybe you failed on one route, but then you try another one, and it's like, I did it. Whereas track, I would go two years without having improved in a certain aspect, or a certain event. And that's where I got started and I just kept going with it.
Shelby Stanger: I've never even led a climb and I've climbed for a long time. So that's really impressive.
Eddie Taylor: But it was either impressive, or really stupid. Because I didn't know any better. I was like, okay, this is what you do.
Shelby Stanger: Eddie got a track and field scholarship for the last couple years of school. He'd done a bunch of different track events in high school so in many ways, decathlon was a perfect fit for him. It let him do a little bit of everything. After graduation from college, Eddie started working as a chemist, but he ended up transitioning to teaching high school, and coaching track and field.
Shelby Stanger: Making the jump from being a chemist to a chemistry teacher is a pretty decent jump. Can you just tell us a little bit about your career and how you made that jump?
Eddie Taylor: Yeah, I worked at a water treatment lab before I became a chemistry teacher. And so in that lab I was responsible for carrying out different analysis for the state and the EPA as well. And to be honest, it was a pretty good job. I got to do all the science that I learned in college. I got to go out couple days a month and go hike in the mountains and sample water where all our drinking water comes from. And so putting all that stuff together, it was a really fun job.
Eddie Taylor: But with that said, the first year I started working that job, my college coach actually reached out to me and put me in contact with his high school coach. And I talked to him and I was not really that interested in helping out, but he was saying, we need a pole vault coach, can you coach pole vault for us? And I was just like, nah, I'm done with track. He's like, well, we have these preseason practices, can you just stop by. Just come by, just see the kids. And he tricked me because I came, I stopped by, I saw the kids and I was back every day after work, helping out. And that's before the season even starts.
Shelby Stanger: Because high school kids are so fun.
Eddie Taylor: They are. And it's really interesting. When you see these kids who find something they're passionate about, and they just want to get better and they're hungry for knowledge, it's awesome. And there's nothing like it.
Shelby Stanger: It sounds like you're a natural coach and a natural teacher.
Eddie Taylor: I had to work a lot to get better at it, I would say. But it was one of those things that I was so excited to do and seeing what was happening to those kids year after year, it's what made me want to switch my career and take a pay cut and become a teacher. Because just working with those kids every day and seeing the direct impact I could help getting them to college, helping them find this path where they can be successful has been something that's been awesome for me.
Shelby Stanger: What was it like to transition into teaching chemistry? I assume you had to get a teaching license?
Eddie Taylor: It was a slow process because my first year as a chemist was that year that I went through the season with a couple kids, and just saw them go from one place in their life to their next place in life, to go into college and they never even imagined going to college. And so at that time I was undecided, and I had told myself if I'm feeling the same way after the next season, I'm going to start getting my teacher license. So I put that on the back burner, and next season comes up and I'm like, man, I want to work with these kids full time. I'm seeing what the other coaches are doing when they're having them in the classroom and after school. I want to be able to do that as well. So that idea just brewed, and I slowly put things into place in my life for that to happen.
Eddie Taylor: Then I actually met my wife. And my wife is a teacher. And it was like, as I was applying to teaching grad schools, I had met her, and chatted with her, and just through that process, like she's a teacher, and starting to look at our schedules I was like, man, this would work out really well. And so not only am I doing something that I find more rewarding, I was also doing something whereas, we would have optimal time off together.
Shelby Stanger: Eddie and his wife have used their vacation time to ski down Denali and climb down Mount Kenya. He's even summited Aconcagua, which is the highest mountain in the Americas. For the last 10 years, Eddie has spent a lot of time gaining skills and experience as a climber, which made him a perfect candidate to join the Full Circle Everest Expedition. When we come back, Eddie tells us about the logistics of their expedition, his teammates, what gear he's carrying, and so much more.
Shelby Stanger: Eddie committed to joining The Full Circle Everest Expedition years ago. And the trip has been in the planning stages since before the COVID-19 pandemic. But this past summer, the team decided to step on the gas, and make it happen. Before booking outfitters and guides, they needed to figure out how to pay for it.
Shelby Stanger: Climbing Everest comes with a hefty price tag, Eddie and his teammates decided to launch a GoFundMe to raise funds. And the response from the community was incredible. People were excited to see the first all-Black team climb the biggest in the world. From there, brands started offering support too. At the time of this conversation with Eddie, they've reached 85% of their fundraising goal. With the majority of the money raised, the team was able to start finalizing plans and making reservations for their journey up the world's tallest peak.
Shelby Stanger: So what are the logistics of this trip? When do you guys plan to leave? Who's going? How long are you planning to go for?
Eddie Taylor: We're planning ... the actual expedition's going to start around April 1st, and we're heading to Nepal for about two months.
Shelby Stanger: Two months?
Eddie Taylor: Yeah, it's longer than any trip I've ever taken. It's a pretty long expedition, but in terms of acclimatized to above 8,000 meters, you have to take that time where you're going up to camps and you're going down to camps, and even just flying into Lukla. There's not really a road system to base camp, so you're hiking from that town that you fly into all the way up through the kombu, and then up to base camp.
Shelby Stanger: Who's going to go with you on this trip?
Eddie Taylor: Going back to when I was chatting with Phil about why this is important. He wanted to make sure that he was put together not just the all-Black team, but a team of people who could be successful in the mountain. And who have experience and who should be there and deserve an opportunity, but may have not had that opportunity.
Eddie Taylor: And I think that's a bit different than what happens in sometimes in some of these spaces where they're looking to just put a Black person there, or a person of color there, or even a woman there just to put someone there. Phil was really trying to build this team from the perspective of like, these people deserve to be there. And there's 11 of us on the team, nine of us who are looking to climb the mountain, and two folks who are helping support.
Shelby Stanger: Awesome.
Eddie Taylor: Yeah.
Shelby Stanger: And all different backgrounds or-
Eddie Taylor: Yeah.
Shelby Stanger: ... You know a lot of them.
Eddie Taylor: Everyone comes from a completely different background. There's men on the team, there's women on the team. There's a whole variety of different ages from, I think Manoah is the youngest in his mid twenties to some folks almost near 60. So it's a big variety. I'm a teacher, three folks in the team have PhDs, a few folks are business owners, and then a couple are professional athletes. So it's a whole gamut of different folks, which is cool.
Shelby Stanger: Can you just explain why it's so expensive for people who just don't know?
Eddie Taylor: There's not only just a permits Everest. If you're just going to base camp, it's not even close to it's expensive, but there's a really high permit cost to go to the summit. Also, there's flights, if you ever looked at flights to Asia for 10 people, it adds up pretty quickly. And then we talked about gear a little bit. There's a ton of gear that you need for Everest. You need specialized boots, and you're not going to wear those boots from the airport all the way up to the summit, so you're going to have another pair of shoes. You use two sleeping bags because ... so the Everest root there's base camp, and then there's the ice fall. And the ice fall is the most dangerous part of Everest.
Eddie Taylor: But because that ice fall is such a hazard, you have basically your sleeping bag below the ice fall, and you have a sleeping bag above the ice fall so that you don't have to carry all that weight back and forth through the ice fall when that's the most dangerous aspect of the trip. And then there's camp 1, 2, 3, 4 in the summit. And so you do rotations where you start at base camp, you go through the ice fall, and then you go, basically, your summit for that rotation is camp one. And then you go back down and then maybe you'll do it for camp three where you stop at those camps along the way and acclimatize.
Shelby Stanger: And you'll stay there for a few nights and then go back down, and then go back up, and then go back down?
Eddie Taylor: Yeah, and you have to do that for the altitude.
Shelby Stanger: So you're not taking oxygen with you?
Eddie Taylor: We are taking oxygen, but even if you do take oxygen, you don't start that till camp three or four.
Shelby Stanger: Okay.
Eddie Taylor: So you do have to acclimatize quite a bit. You don't want to go from sea level and just put your oxygen tank up. Because even the pressure's different, it's not just the amount of oxygen, it's also the pressure.
Eddie Taylor: Going back to what you were saying in terms of cost. You have all that gear to bring over, so even 10 flights, all that gear, there's no way that's going to fit in two duffles, so you have the luggage costs as well. But then beyond just the permit fees, you have your outfitters. Your outfitters are people who help you out with logistics there.
Eddie Taylor: In general, you can't just show up to Everest and climb Everest. I think people have climbed it in the past Alpine style, but very few and far between. So every year the ice fall area is different. They have to put ladders across the carvasses. They fix the ropes, and that's what the Sherpa team does. And so your outfitter has folks on that team that are helping fix the routes for the season. And so that's all that goes into the cost of Everest and why it ends up being so massive.
Shelby Stanger: So you're going to need a ton of gear for this trip. Are there any pieces of gear you're really excited about?
Eddie Taylor: Yeah, there's a lot of gear. I could go down the list of different things we're using, but well, North Face is our main sponsor. And so they're providing us with apparel, and that was something that we worked out early on. So we don't really have a choice in those things, but they make the best for big mountains. But things that we did have a choice in were boots. I've worked with SCARPA a little bit here and there, and SCARPA makes ridiculously good ice climbing boots. When you go from a boot that's meant for ice climbing in Colorado to a boot that's meant for climbing Everest. Usually they're a lot bulkier, but they did something to it that they can climb just as well as a really light boot. So that's cool.
Eddie Taylor: We're using Whippets from Black Diamond, versus the traditional ice sacks under the whole mountain because those things are amazing. It's a hiking pole with an ice sac on top of it. And so for skiing, they're amazing. And even for hiking, for things that are moderately technical where you need an ice sac to self arrest, but you might you're not climbing with it, it's amazing.
Shelby Stanger: Earlier you mentioned the danger factor of this trip. You've climbed some pretty gnarly rock faces and mountains. What makes Everest more dangerous than other climbs you've done?
Eddie Taylor: When you're rock climbing and ice climbing, unless you're like, I know you said you interviewed Alex Honnold, unless you're pretty soloing, there's always systems in place to keep you safe. You're attached to a rope, you're clipping gear, the rope sometimes that's above you, that's when you're top roping. And there's always these systems that keep you safe. Occasionally, things happen like, there's rock fall, or a hiker just throws a rock off the edge of the cliff, or something like that happens, but that's very uncommon.
Eddie Taylor: And so in general, I feel pretty safe rock climbing. And most of the accidents happen from mistakes. Human-made errors. Like you were up really late and you forgot to clip in or something like that. Or you repelled off the end of your rope because you forgot to tie a knot. That's where the big accidents happened. But there's a lot of control about that happening.
Eddie Taylor: When you go to Everest, it's different. I know there was a big disaster a couple years ago where there was an earthquake and an avalanche went almost into base camp. And that's something you can't control. And then going through the ice fall, basically there's some rocks and some over overhanging hazards where they're going to come down at some point, and you don't know when it is. You can do things like, you can try to get to the ice fall faster, they make not a course, but they put the trail on a side of it that is a little bit safer. But at the end of the day, that's an objective hazard that you can't control.
Eddie Taylor: And that's where I keep saying there's a danger aspect of Everest because that objective hazard's probably a bit higher than what we'd say in climbing. But people accept risk at any part of their life. We look at you how dangerous a car accident is, and it's pretty high. The rates of fatalities in cars are pretty high, but with that said, that's a pretty acceptable risk for everyone. And so I think it's just like comparing that level of risk and that level of danger is where that comes into on Everest where it's just yes, there's things you can do to mess up, but there's that things that you can't control, which makes it scary.
Shelby Stanger: There are a lot of risks that are outside of the team's control, but Eddie's doing his best to prepare, not just financially, but also physically and mentally. Even though he's climbed a lot of difficult peaks over the past decade, Everest presents new terrain and challenges that Eddie has never encountered before. As a former collegiate athlete, he's pretty sick of formal training plans. So he's found a way to train that works for him.
Shelby Stanger: So you leave in April, what are you doing to train or prepare?
Eddie Taylor: I haven't done a lot of specific training leading up to now. I've been climbing a lot. I go climbing every day before work either at the gym -
Shelby Stanger: Before work?
Eddie Taylor: ... Yeah.
Shelby Stanger: How early are you climbing?
Eddie Taylor: It depends. So usually I'm out the house, or I'm there by six. And so I got a window between six and 8:00 AM. And then-
Shelby Stanger: At the gym?
Eddie Taylor: ... It depends. So up until daylight savings time, I typically go to El Dorado canyon. It's 15 minutes away from my house. It's a really pretty park and there's lots of good rock climbs. And then as daylight savings time and at six o'clock in October, it's not light out anymore and it's cold. So then I transition to the gym.
Eddie Taylor: And so that's just getting all that volumes, something that's important to me. And then me and Anna are out on the weekends going here or there. And then over Thanksgiving, we went to Mexico and climbed Orizaba, and did a little bit of rock climbing, but we were mostly just ate tacos.
Eddie Taylor: But that's what I've been doing for training because in terms of when you go rock climbing, you carry a heavy pack to the base. It's cardio intensive, you're doing those strength things. And then my thought is, as I've been building that pretty high base, that's not necessarily specific to what I'm doing on Everest. But for me, when I do the same thing over and over again, I tend to get burnt out. And so I've been doing that and now I'm ready to transition into more skiing and more ... I just actually signed up for a ski race mid-March. A uphill, downhill, a backcountry ski race where you're going up, and you're going down and you cover 20 miles and 10,000 vert. And so I just signed up for that, not that I'm a big competitive person anymore, but just so I could have a intermediate goal before I get to Everest.
Shelby Stanger: Sounds like you're really methodical about these little goals, but you also make them really fun along the way.
Eddie Taylor: That's what I hope to do. Going back to decathlon, I really was appreciative of that part of my life. But also in terms of that very formalized training that I was doing, I got a little burnt out. I was in the weight room four days a week. We were running five, six days a week depending on the time of year. And so that formalized training where it was just like tracking yourself and pushing yourself. It was awesome, but now going to these outdoor sports, it's like you always do them with people. You always do them in different places and you see all these different places. And so that's where I still take that structure, the little bit of structure I had, but I put it into a whole different realm.
Shelby Stanger: Everest though is coming up. Imagine that your training is going to get a little bit more regimented. Do you guys have a schedule? Is someone sending you guys a training plan to start come 2022?
Eddie Taylor: No one's sending us a training plan. Everyone is pretty skilled athletes, I'd say, on the team. And so basically, our goal is to shoot for, can we hike 12,000 feet avert in a week? Because that's what summit week looks like. So for me, typically I was going back and looking at what I've done over the past six months, and I normally do about eight to 10,000 a week just based on the climb and other things I do. So it's ramping that up just a little bit, as well as getting comfortable carrying a heavy pack. Because I do that a little bit, but I don't do that as much as I'm going to have to do it.
Eddie Taylor: And so basically, Phil does a pretty good job of knowing that everyone on the team is really experienced and knows how to train for these larger things and just says, look, this is what you need to get to, 12,000 feet a week, if you can do that, I feel pretty confident.
Shelby Stanger: What about the mental part?
Eddie Taylor: That's a whole other thing.
Shelby Stanger: Talk to me about it. Because I'm always interested in climbing a mountain's like the ultimate metaphor of life. But how does one prepare mentally to do something that they've never done? There's a lot of things can do to simulate that part.
Eddie Taylor: There's a lot of things you can do, and I think a lot of people approach it differently. And we just talked about the physical part of the training. And then there's a whole altitude component that's separate from this. But then I think the mental for each person it's different. At the end of the day, you're out for an extended amount of time. You're tired, you're making decisions when you're tired and you're learning to push yourself there. And mentally that can be pretty draining.
Eddie Taylor: And so that's something that I do, I don't want to say regularly, but in terms of being on Denali and skiing from the top was like, I had to carry my skis. We started at a lower camp to summit, so I've had that at experience there. And so doing those things that we know how to do and just telling ourselves like, we know how to do this, we're just going to keep doing it. And so I think you can't simulate the exact thing always, but you can simulate being out for hours and hours.
Shelby Stanger: The mental and physical challenges aren't the only factors weighing on the climbers. With such public support and because of the historical nature of their trip, the group feels a sense of responsibility. That's part of the reason The Full Circle Expedition is producing a documentary about their attempted ascent. They're also collaborating with Microsoft to create virtual field trips for students across the country. Climbing Everest is no small feat, but doing it in the public eye adds an extra layer of pressure. For Eddie, there are also a few personal objectives that he's carrying with him as he climbs.
Shelby Stanger: What are you hoping to get from the experience personally?
Eddie Taylor: I've gotten a lot already from the experience I'll say, in terms of all these connections I've made in the outdoor industry, in terms of just getting to meet this team. Because to be honest, before really last year, I hadn't climbed with a single Black person besides my sister. And so getting to know this team of other Black people in America who have very similar experiences to me has been incredibly rewarding.
Shelby Stanger: That's awesome. Is there anything you're looking for the most about it?
Eddie Taylor: I'm really excited for the trip, and I think it's all going to be good and I think it's all like ... I've never been someone to be like, man, I need to be at the summit like that's the only thing I care about. I feel like through the past year, I feel like I've almost got another degree in marketing. I've learned to connect with people, I've learned how to use social media more effectively, and work with different companies, and work with different groups. So it's been like, I feel like I've learned quite a bit over the past year, and I'm excited to just keep learning as we go through this process.
Shelby Stanger: So Everest has an allure, unlike any other mountain. It's the most well known mountain for people to climb. What do you think of Everest?
Eddie Taylor: I think it's a challenging mountain. And it's a different challenge than I've ever faced. My high point is around 7,000 meters in Aconcagua. Whereas, Everest is significantly higher, significantly longer expedition. And I know there's a big debate of Everest isn't very technical, but I think that's pushing yourself in a different way.
Shelby Stanger: Eddie and the Full Circle team will be making history as the first all-Black climbing team to summit the world's tallest mountain. Eddie, thank you so much for coming on Wild Ideas Worth Living. I bet your high school students are so proud of you and they're so lucky to be in your class. We'll all be thinking of you and following along with your Trek.
Shelby Stanger: If you want to learn more about the full circle Everest expedition, check out their Instagram @full Circle Everest. You can also visit their website @fullcircleeverest.com. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fasler and Sylvia Thomas, and our Senior Producer is Chelsea Davis. Our Executive Producers are Palo Mootla and Joe Crosby. As always, we appreciate when you follow this show, rate it, and take the time to write a review wherever you listen. We read every single one of your reviews, they mean a ton. Remember wherever you are, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.