A teenage girl from California has reached the summit of Mount Everest, making her the youngest person to scale the highest peaks on each of the seven continents.

Samantha Larson, 18, who also became the youngest foreigner to climb the world’s highest mountain, broke the age record of the “seven summits” challenge that was set last year by a Briton, Rhys Miles Jones, who achieved the feat at 20.

Miss Larson is expected in Katmandu, Nepal’s capital, today with her father David Larson, 51, who climbed Everest with her. “We made it to the top!” she told Sarah Hanson, her mother, in New York via a satellite telephone after reaching the 29,035ft (8,850m) peak.

The Nepalese Government said that she was the youngest foreigner to have reached Everest’s summit, although some in the climbing community claim a 17-year-old French boy reached the top in 1990. A Nepalese girl, Ming Kipa Sherpa, 14, climbed the mountain from the Tibetan side in 2003.

Miss Larson has been climbing since she was a child. She reached the summit of Aconcagua in South America when she was 13, and Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa the next year.

The seven peaks include Kosciuszko in Australia, although some mountaineers say that Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia should supplant it on the list. Just to make sure, Miss Larson plans to climb it in August. The other mountains are Elbrus in Russia; Mount McKinley in Alaska; and Vinson in Antarctica.

Miss Larson graduated near the top of her school and has a place at Stanford University. She once lugged her oboe on a trek and practised it in snowy conditions so that she was ready for a school concert on her return. She is a member of the Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra. On the 22,841ft Aconcagua in Argentina she studied algebra at 16,000ft.

“She’s just amazing,” her mother said, adding that her daughter has “a kind of stamina and persistence that just seems to be part of her nature, and has been since she was little.”

Since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first to conquer Everest on May 29, 1953, about 2,000 people have scaled the mountain. About 70 climbers have reached the summit in the past three days. But 205 have been killed since 1953, including two South Koreans and a Sherpa guide this month.

Miss Larson began posting reports on her Everest climb last month, and continued blogging until she was more than halfway up the mountain.

On Saturday night she arrived back safely at Base Camp, her mother said.

Janet Moore, her stepmother, said that she had spoken to Miss Larson and her father. “They sounded well, much better than they had the day before,” she said.

Miss Larson’s blogs did not read like those of most teenagers. “We’ve tried to hold on to our fitness these past few days by doing some sort of activity each day,” she wrote from Base Camp before the ascent. “We’ve been ice climbing in a really neat cave near base camp, and we’ve also been on hikes up to Camp One.”

Larson climbs

Africa Kilimanjaro, Tanzania (5,895m)

Antarctica Vinson (4,897m)

Asia Everest, Nepal (8.850m)

Europe Elbrus, on the border between Russia and Georgia (5,642m)

North America Mount McKinley, United States (6,194m)

Oceania Carstensz, Indonesia (4884m)

South America Aconcagua, Argentina (6,962m)

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