By admin 
CORTEZ — In a shed in his front yard beside a pasture of goats and against the backdrop of the La Plata Mountains, Phil Henderson sews.
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The international mountaineer and expedition leader who has climbed Everest, Denali and Kilimanjaro sits behind a sewing table, where colorful strips of neoprene and random pockets from backpacks are spread in front of him. This is Henderson’s sewing shop, containing five machines, drawers overflowing with zipper sliders, buckles and bobbins, and bags and bags of pieces and parts of rejected backpacks.
The materials, many discarded from the design headquarters of backpack manufacturer Osprey in Cortez, will become new packs, pouches, dry bags and crossbody totes with straps made from retired climbing rope.
The gear repair and recycling program began as a solo operation for Henderson, inspired by decades of having to patch holes and fix tents, tarps, kayak spray skirts and various other equipment that broke down during expeditions around the world. It has evolved into a training program for Montezuma County students who might otherwise never touch a sewing machine.
The new sewing shed at Henderson’s home on the outskirts of Cortez is a story of how connections within a small, rural community led to a broader endeavor to reduce waste in the outdoor industry, and at the same time, help kids discover they have the power to put things back together.
“My mentality is the least amount of money, the least amount of resources, the least amount of time for the projects that I do,” Henderson said on a hot August day in his shed. “There are certain things we need to purchase — needles, thread, scissors — but I don’t want to have to go to the store and purchase material.”
He picks up the material at Osprey, backpacks and bags that have been rejected by the company or returned by customers for minor defects and are headed to the recycle bin or the trash. “The cost of teaching someone else how to sew is minimal,” Henderson said. “They can’t mess it up. It’s already trash.”
Henderson’s nonprofit Full Circle Expeditions received a $28,000 grant last year from the LOR Foundation, which invests in rural communities in the West. The money paid for sewing machines, a heat press and the shed.
Outdoor industry lacks leaders of color
The whole enterprise came together because of connections among community members in Cortez, where Henderson, 63, moved about 10 years ago with his wife and teenage daughter. He previously lived in California, Utah and the Chilean part of Patagonia.
Henderson, who for decades has trained people to survive in the outdoors, had been hired to do a team-building exercise for the LOR Foundation, which funds community projects in Cortez and other Colorado towns. While there, he mentioned his sewing projects and was encouraged to apply for a grant.
At the same time, Henderson has been volunteering at a local charter school tucked into McElmo Canyon, in the red-dirt hills of Montezuma County, accented with buttes and cactus. He accompanies the kids of Battle Rock Charter School on three-day “expeditions” to the Grand Canyon and Lake Powell.
When the school’s sixth-grade teacher suggested her students do some service work for Henderson to thank him for his help, Henderson invited them over to stack some of his firewood. And to sew.
The kids showed up with stuffed animals, old T-shirts, a hat and a chewed-up dog leash, all needing repair.
“They had never threaded a needle before, and it was like a light turned on for me,” Henderson said. “It was like, well, that’s my goal, that these students that are in sixth grade can leave that school knowing how to use a needle and thread.”
As a role model for children at Battle Rock, where 20% of students are enrolled members of a Native tribe, mainly the nearby Ute Mountain Ute, Henderson’s leadership has another purpose, too.
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Henderson in 2013 became the second Black person to summit Denali, in Alaska, and in 2022 managed an expedition that doubled the number of Black climbers to reach the top of Everest, bringing the total to 17. He also led an all Black ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro in 2018.
“The outdoor industry as a whole is lacking leaders of color, whether that be from the Navajo Nation or other Indigenous folks, whether it be from the Black community or the Latino community,” Henderson said. “They want to be in community with people who look like them. They want to be taught by people who look like them, at least initially, right? And I know that I fill that niche, anyone who has interest, and it doesn’t matter if they’re white, brown, or Black.”
Empowering students to “make things work for them”
Battle Rock K-6, where 18 of 90 students are enrolled tribal members, is down a winding county road alongside McElmo Canyon. Its playground backs up to the hills, and children are encouraged to play among the rocks, dirt and trees.
“Our kids climb trees,” said Paula Fury, who teaches sixth grade and is on the school’s leadership team. “We want kids to be kids. They play and they get dirty. We do have kids that fall in a cactus and get scratched. Those experiences make them stronger.”
The school is focused on making learning relevant to the environment and culture that surrounds it, and Battle Rock regularly takes students into the outdoors on overnight trips — which makes it the perfect place for Henderson to volunteer.
As part of his nonprofit, the sixth graders from Battle Rock will visit the sewing shed throughout the school year, each with the goal of completing their own project. One girl is talking about adding pockets to a dress. “It’s empowering them to know how to make things work for them, Fury said. “And he talks about how this really useful stuff just ends up in our landfill.”
During one of Henderson’s first visits to the school, he brought tents, climbing ropes and sleeping bags, and told the kids what it was like to lead expeditions up the tallest mountain in the world. Fury has photographs of kids all piled in a sleeping bag.
For the past two years, Henderson has joined the students as they camped, hiked and stargazed in the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, then continued on for more camping and kayaking at Lake Powell.
“I call him anytime we have an adventure coming up,” Fury said. Because why not invite a guy who is ready for any outdoor emergency that might arise.
Henderson offers adult sewing lessons for $20 per hour, or instead of a fee, an hour of assistance with his projects. People also call him for help with their gear, including a farmer down the road who had a giant tarp that he needed cut in half and restitched. Henderson, who previously worked for Osprey and the wilderness school NOLS, sometimes sells his patchwork bags at local fairs, including at a Juneteenth festival in Durango this summer.
Henderson has dreams of a mobile gear-repair shop, a traveling sewing shed that could visit other areas. He also hopes to expand connections with other manufacturers based in the Four Corners, which has become something of a hotspot for gear makers. That includes raft maker Alpacka, which relocated from Alaska and took over the former Mancos Valley Hardware Store in 2017.
Henderson lives by the saying, “If something is broken, fix it.” But for him it’s more of a metaphor about life than a statement about sewing.
“That was the concept: utilize this resource, keep things from going in the landfill, and use those things to give other people confidence, not just in sewing,” he said. “You learn a lot when you take things apart. You build confidence. You look at a zipper and think, I don’t know, if I take that apart that I’ll ever get it back together again. Actually, it’s pretty easy if you just learn.”
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