(CNN) — Andrew Alexander King will never forget the first time he took on Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest peak and the world’s largest freestanding mountain, in 2018. But it wasn’t the summit that surprised the climber. It was the greeting he received when he came down, as local mountain guides gathered around him in a celebratory dance.”It turns out they were excited because they’d never seen an African American climb,” he tells CNN. “And I was kind of just blown away by that.”According to the American Alpine Club’s inaugural 2019 State of Climbing report only 1% of surveyed climbers identified as Black.
Meet three Black climbers taking representation to new heights on summits across Africa and around the world
