An 18-year-old woman has reached the summit of Mount Everest, becoming what is believed to be the youngest person to scale the highest peaks on each of the seven continents.
"We made it to the top!" Samantha Larson, of Long Beach, gasped to her mother in New York via satellite phone from the top of Everest on Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
According to 7summits.com, a Web site that tracks those who have accomplished the feat, completing the climb in Nepal makes Larson the youngest person to have completed the "seven summits" challenge, breaking a 2006 record set by then-20-year-old British climber Rhys Miles Jones.
The Nepalese government said Friday she was the youngest foreigner ever to reach the 29,035-foot summit of Everest, though some climbing Web sites claim a 17-year-old boy from France did it in 1990.
A 15-year-old Sherpa girl from Nepal was the youngest ever to climb Everest.