On top of the world: 10-year-old Pakistani girl youngest to summit 7,000-metre peak

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

Selena Khawaja, who started climbing from the age of eight, broke the record after summiting the 7,027-metre-tall Spantik peak on Wednesday. Spantik or Golden Peak is a mountain in the Karakoram subrange in Gilgit Baltistan’s Nagar Valley.

#SummitAlert#Pakistan 's 10 years old Selena Khawaja became the #youngest person ever to stand on top of #Spantik peak (7,027m) this morning. This record also holds special value as this makes her the youngest #climber ever to #summit a #7000er anywhere in the world#karakoram pic.twitter.com/t0sMTbzTcl

— The Karakoram Club (@KarakoramClub) July 17, 2019

This is not the first time Selena has broken a record. She 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 setting her sights on Spantik this year.

Selena aims to scale the world’s 12th highest mountain, Broad Peak (8,051 metres) also this year before heading towards the 8,848-metre-high Mount Everest, the world’s tallest.