Jordan Romero, 13, has reached the top of Mt. Everest, his team announced. He becomes the youngest person to have scaled the world's tallest peak.
Rob Bailey, a spokesman for Romero's climbing party, confirmed that Romero achieved the 29,035-foot summit Saturday morning local time (Himalayan range).
Bailey had few other details. Romero, an eighth-grader from Big Bear Lake, Calif., was climbing with his father Paul and Paul's girlfriend, Karen Lundgren. The trio now needs to bag Mount Vinson in Antarctica to complete the Seven Summits, or the tallest peak on each continent.
Romeo breaks a record held by Nepalese Mingkipa Sherpani, a female climber who in 2003 summited Everest via the Northeast Ridge Route at 15.Romero and his two partners, along with three Sherpa porters, also used the more remote and less-traveled north-side route, via Tibet, because he was too young to obtain a permit in Nepal, the starting point for the more popular south route.
His trip was controversial because of his age and the mental and physical prowess required to reach the top of Everest, and because of the dangers associated with a mountain on which a handful of climbers perish each season.It's too early for the Romero group to celebrate, as it still has to negotiate a descent on the highest of Himalayan giants. But if reports are accurate the kid has indeed stood atop the world, and that is cause for celebration.
-- Pete Thomas
It is official, my nephew, Jordan Romero, did stand on top of the world on May 22, 2010.
Gloria Romero Howey
Posted by: Stevegloriahowey | May 30, 2010 at 03:23 PM