A 21-year-old Norwegian woman has become the youngest person to reach the South Pole on skis, her team says
A 21-year-old Norwegian woman has become the youngest person to reach the South Pole on skis, solo and unassisted, her team told AFP on Tuesday.
Karen Kylleso achieved the feat on the night between Monday and Tuesday, 114 years after Norwegian and polar explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the South Pole.
Kylleso, born on May 9, 2003, covered 702 miles in just under 54 days.
“It’s a page written in polar history,” her mentor, Norwegian adventurer Lars Ebbesen, told AFP.
Kylesso posted pictures of her arrival at the South Pole on Instagram.
The young Scandinavian thus dethroned Frenchman Pierre Hedan, who, according to the Guinness Book of Records, held the record as the youngest person to reach the South Pole alone and unaided at the age of 26.
He set the record on January 7, 2024.
Kylleso, who is only 5 feet tall and weighs 106 pounds, pulled a sled weighing 100 kilograms, or twice her weight, in an attempt to reach the pole.
ua Interview for November with the adventure company Shackleton, Kylleso said that “putting on the weight was one of the hardest parts.”
“Because I’m smaller than the average man doing this, I need extra weight and strength to pull the same load,” she said, adding that she had increased her body weight by 10% before the expedition.
Kylleso arrived late Monday night in temperatures of around -25 degrees Celsius (-13 degrees Fahrenheit).
She is already the youngest girl to cross Greenland on skis, completing the feat at the age of 15 in 2018.
“She barely got (to Greenland) before she asked me, ‘Do you think I can go to the South Pole?'” Ebbesen recalled.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store hailed the young adventurer on Tuesday, saying she was “following in the footsteps of Norway’s polar heroes”.
On December 14, 1911, Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the geographic South Pole, part of a tragic race against the British Robert Scott who died of exhaustion and cold on the way back together with his four companions.
Kylles’ achievement comes just a few years later Preet Chandi skied solo to the South Polebecoming the first woman of color to accomplish the feat. “I want to encourage people to, you know, be proud of their skin color and where they’re from,” the Briton told CBS News. – It took me a long time to be proud of it.
