Editorial: A teen with a plan

Saturday, May 26, 2007 | 7:11 a.m.

At just 18, Samantha Larson has accomplished a lifetime feat - to scale the highest peaks of all seven continents.

The Long Beach, Calif., teenager completed this monumental accomplishment when she reached the top of Mount Everest on May 17. According to 7summits.com, which tracks those who attempt the challenge, Larson has joined the ranks of 199 other people worldwide who have completed the task. And she is the first teenager and youngest person reported to have done so.

A May 20 story by the Associated Press says Larson climbed South America's Aconcagua when she was 13 and successfully tackled Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro a year later. She climbs with her father, an anesthesiologist, and possesses what her mother told AP is "a kind of stamina and persistence that seem to be part of her nature."

Larson told AP that scaling 29,035-foot -tall Mount Everest was "much harder, longer and higher" than her other endeavors. She trains by running, swimming, dancing and rock-climbing. Larson also takes oboe, French and photography lessons.

She graduated from high school in 2006, AP reports, but postponed starting classes at Stanford University so she could complete her climbing goal. Larson is not the youngest person to ever climb Everest, though. That title belongs to a 15-year-old Sherpa girl from Nepal.

Still, Larson will now join only 26 other females who have successfully climb the highest mountains on seven continents - an amazing feat for someone of any age, and certainly more so for one so young. Larson's resilience and resolve are, quite simply, awe-inspiring.