A six-year-old British girl climbed a 13,600-foot mountain to raise funds for the hospital that saved her life when she was a baby.
Seren Price, from Wales, became the youngest person to climb Mount Toubkal in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.
The six-year-old now plans to climb Mont Blanc, western Europe’s highest mountain, in a bid to raise money for Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
Serene explained that she had a “lump” on her neck when she was a child and the hospital helped treat her illness, which is why she is now raising money for it. Her father explained that the hospital saved her life when she was young because she was born prematurely and had a hemangioma on her neck which was affecting her ability to breathe.
Serene and her father, Glyn Price, went to Morocco in August. With their guide, they walked for eight hours to Mount Toubkal base camp, despite temperatures above 40 degrees.
Mr Price said they reached the summit the next day. “It was a tough climb with narrow paths on slippery steep rocks,” he told the BBC.
“The heat was the biggest challenge… but once we got to the top it was fantastic. There were about 20 people there who had followed their story on social media, and they were giving them a warm welcome,” he said.
Speaking about his training for the difficult climb, Ceren confidently said that he only trained for a week, to which his father laughingly corrected him, saying that the training went on for even longer than that.
The father-daughter duo had been training for about a year, including night-time walks in the nearby national park. “We were able to replicate some of the tracks. Obviously, the weather wasn’t the same, but the terrain was the same,” Mr Price said.
This isn’t the first time the young climber has broken a record. In 2022, she became the youngest person to complete the UK Three Peaks Challenge – climbing the three highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales in under 48 hours.
Now, the young climber has his eyes set on Mount Black, which he says he is excited to climb to “see the snow.”
Mr Price, who also has a son, says there’s no forcing children’s interests. “I have a son and I’ve tried to take him to the mountains but he’s not interested – but Seren loves it.”
When asked why she is passionate about mountaineering, Seren said: “I love spending time with my dad – and I love seeing beautiful things when I am on top of a mountain.”
