10-year-old Pakistani girl becomes youngest to scale 7,000-metre peak

Selena Khawaja, a 10-year-old Pakistani girl, has become the youngest climber anywhere in the world to scale a 7,000-metre-high mountain.

Selena Khawaja broke the record after summiting the 7,027-metre-tall Spantik peak on Wednesday—the youngest person to do so. Spantik or Golden Peak is a mountain in the Karakoram subrange in Gilgit Baltistan's Nagar Valley.

According to her father Yousaf Khawaja, Selena started climbing when she was only eight years old.

"In less than one year, she was able to do Miranjani (3,000m) round trip in half the time," the father told reporters in March last year.

Selena was just nine years old when she became the youngest to scale the 5,765m high Quz Sar Peak, and then successfully summited Mingli Sar (6050m) in June 2018, before heading towards Spantik this year.

But the sky is the limit for young Selena, who aims to fly even higher than 7,000 metres later this year. The little climber has set her eyes on scaling Broad Peak (8,051 metres), the world’s 12th highest mountain, before she heads on to conquer the 8,848-metre-high Mount Everest, the world's tallest, later this year.