A 7-year-old girl who wanted to honor her late father by climbing the 19,341-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro has broken the world record as the youngest female to climb Africa’s tallest mountain.
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When Montannah Kenney of Texas found out that her mother was climbing the storied peak, she asked to come along.
“She told me, ‘Mommy I want to do it with you,'” Hollie Kenney told CBS News.
Although the rules stated that Montannah needed to be 10 years old to ascend the mountain, the family found a loophole: a special permit.
They originally scheduled a date in 2019 for the feat, but they sped up their plans after learning that an 8-year-old girl had reached the top of Kilimanjaro in January.
Montannah’s father died when she was just 3 years old. Two months before her eighth birthday, she accomplished something no one else had – all to honor him.
“I wanted to be closer with my dad,” she explained. “I wanted to do fun adventures with my mom and learn about Mt. Kilimanjaro.”
With no mountains near Austin, where the Kenneys live, it was difficult to train for the task. But the duo improvised with hours-long hikes on the weekends and shorter ones during the week.
When they arrived in Tanzania for the week-long climb last month, Hollie and Montannah were a little shocked.
“It was way steeper than we thought.” Hollie said of the actual mountain. “We didn’t know what was a cliff and what was a cloud. That was big eye opener.”
After successfully accomplishing such an extraordinary goal, Montannah shared that she isn’t in a hurry to do it again any time soon. When asked if she would climb again, she answered “maybe,” but not as long as this journey.
While the task itself was certainly impressive, the most important thing is that Montannah was able to achieve her goal for her father.
(H/T: CBS News)