13-Year-Old Is Youngest to Top Everest

Source: Associated Press

Filed at 12:16 a.m. ET

BEIJING (AP) -- A 13-year-old American boy became the youngest climber to reach the top of Mount Everest on Saturday, breaking the former record as part of his quest to climb the highest peaks on all seven continents.

A spokesman for Jordan Romero said the boy's team called him by satellite phone from the summit of the world's highest mountain, 29,035 feet above sea level.

"Their dreams have now come true. Everyone sounded unbelievably happy," a new statement on Romero's blog said Saturday morning.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/22/sports/AP-China-Everest-Boy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Excellent to see a teenager performing a great physical feat! Unlike Justin Bieber.

His parents paid a lot of money to have experienced climbers drag them to the summit. I just have a hard time taking people like that seriously. They use guides and Sherpas to haul their equipment, set up their camps and set lines for them.

Harkens back to kids whose dads build their Boy Scout Pinewood Derby cars for them. Wow! We win! Huzzah!

Now that this little overachiever has the title of first 13 year old to climb Everest, a lot of 13-to-whatever year olds will be discouraged from being so reckless. Maybe they'll all go back to doing what 13 year olds normally do.

..."it's so easy a 13-year old can do it"

Now I just hope he gets down ok. :scared:

good article in the NY Times from Wed: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/sports/20climber.html?scp=1&sq=everest&st=cse

seriously, Everest has killed almost 1/4 of the people who have tried to climb. It's more dangerous than people think. I would never let my child put their life at risk.

Stupid parents, and a stupid guide who facilitated this.

Trained athletes with decades of climbing experience have died or been permanently crippled trying to summit - and those are adults. Who the hell would let their child risk it? They don't even let kids of that age drive, and for good reason: they don't have the emotional maturity to be safe on the road. And a quarter of all drivers don't get killed yearly, the way Everest climbers are.

It's child abuse, and rather than being celebrated it should be prosecuted.

A quest to be the "youngest" and "get a record" that may well have put others' lives in danger.

Sorry, I'll take Bieber over that reality TV type shit any day of the week.

You support Bieber even though he can't sing right?

What about Bryce Harper? Or current sports stars who got drafted straight out of high school, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James and Dwight Howard?

Romero risked his life and others' and worked hard to make a great achievement. Bieber just stole other musicians' lyrics and used Auto-Tune and average session musicians for his frisbee CDs.

because everyone else is always doing it wrong.... ;)

I know about a dozen who have climbed Everest, a couple of them very well. From what I'm told over much drink, it appears it's all logistics, weather luck and money until summit day, at which point it's all those things plus the Russian Roulette of altitude health issues (which truly have no predictors as to who they'll strike at that elevation) and then finally a willingness to believe there's nothing more important than walking up the last few steps, which take forever. Nothing.

The secret saying is "there's no team on summit day." None of them, speaking candidly, made me feel as if summit day was a day they were particularly proud of. Life-changing, yes, but like most things built up to be the be-all, end-all, not as expected.

Who the f*ck lets a 13 yr old put himself in that position? Way to not respect the mountain and risk the lives of the sherpas for this attention whoring stunt.

It is a weird world we live in. At least 1 billion people will go to bed hungry tonight, untold millions will not know with certainty what the next day is going to bring in terms of famine, war, disease. And in the Western world, bored kids can risk their lives just for the heck of it... because they are so numbed by their useless cushy existences that they need to go out of their way to confront their own mortality (in a controlled way) to just feel alive.

Want an "extreme" experience? Go to a refugee camp, and fight to get at the front of the line to be able to get the rice scraps when the aid trucks dump 100 kilos of food to feed a few thousand people. Yeah, that is "extreme" man...

"Does this kid have papers? Does he have a long-form birth certificate. Oh, hey, while we're at it, Get Off Our Lawn."

- RepubliBaggers

the summit, does not have an age limit (China doesn't mind 7 yr old laborers, remember). I am sure he's surrounded by expert climbers, though. His website (his name) has all kinds of sponsors and it's pretty much appears like a tool to make him (family, cough) a ton of money off his youthful fame.

I'm happy for him, but what a dangerous thing for a young kid to be doing when so many die on the tallest mountain....

I wonder what was the age of the OLDEST person to accomplish this feat?

I'm guessing no older than 65 y.o. if that?

The oldest to do all seven summits was, I think, 70 or 71.

At least with the elder climbers, there's never worries about "informed consent." ;)

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Then 11...

It's hard for me to understand parents who would facilitate this. I don't think it is a good idea to be overprotective, but this seems reckless. Besides, how can a person ever top this in later life? It might be counter-productive for the boy's overall psychological development.