Africa-Press – Kenya. A Kenyan teacher James Kagambi is preparing to make history on Mt Everest alongside veterans from the United State in a 70-day trip.
The team, which is set to embark on the trip in March 2022, is seeking to rewrite history as the first all-Black Mountaineering Expedition team to reach the summit of Mt Everest.
Since the first person climbed onto the summit in 1953, over 10,000 have set crampons atop the mountain, which is the world’s tallest, but less than 10 of them are black.
“Because it’s Everest, it’s an iconic mountain to climb for anyone who’s into mountaineering.
“The other part of it — we could climb other mountains in the Himalaya — it’s a test. It’s a piece of experience in someone’s mountaineering career. It’s about the Sherpa people and working with them. It’s sharing that connection with other American climbers who haven’t been to the Himalaya,” the team’s leader, Philip Henderson told Men’s Journal regarding the trip.
Kagambi, who began his career in mountain climbing in 1987, had previously worked as a school teacher, sports coach and traditional Africa music tutor.
When he joined the mountaineering career, he rose to the rank of senior mountaineering instructor at National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), a non-profit outdoor school.
In Kenya, he works as a guide of the mountain madness trips to Mount Kenya and the Rwenzoris in Uganda. In his tutoring career, he tapped into his experience as a school teacher to work as a guide.
Other climbers in the team are Abby Dione, Manoah Ainu, Eddie Tayler, Thomas Moore, Fred Campbell, Demon, Mullens and Rosemary Saal.
During the trip to climb the 29,032-foot mountain, the mountaineers will use bottled oxygen.
Kagambi will be the second Kenyan to go up the mountain after Steve Obbayi made the attempt in 2015 alongside other people.
At the time, Obbayi noted that the exercise is often tedious and riddled with extreme weather conditions including negative 20 degrees as well as howling wind.
