13-Year-Old Attempts to Climb Everest

It turns out not all teenagers are lazy: Thirteen-year-old mountain-climbing enthusiast Jordan Romero will soon set out to become the youngest person to climb Mount Everest. Romero already has successfully climbed five of the Seven Summits, and he was just 11 when he climbed Alaska's Denali Mountain, widely considered the world's coldest mountain. Romero wrote in an email to The New York Times, “I really have dreamed about standing on top of the world since I was a little kid.” But some people feel that he's getting ahead of himself, and question Romero's emotional and physical maturity. “My gut reaction was that 13 seems young to have the emotional maturity to decide to be there himself,” said Eric Weihenmayer, who became the only blind person to climb Everest and the Seven Summits in 2001. Of the challenge presented to Romero's body, Dr. Mikhail Kazachkov, a Brooklyn-based pediatric pulmonologist said, “The most decent statement about extreme altitude climbing for a 13-year-old would be we just don’t know what to expect." But Romero doesn't believe his age is an issue: “I don’t feel like I am rushing. Everest just happens to come now when I am 13 and I don’t think age matters so much.”