Samina Baig: Biography, Age, Village, Everest, K2 and the South Pole (2026)

Who is Samina Baig?

Here is the main point. Samina Baig is the woman who showed that a girl from a mountain village with no road, no gym and no sponsor could stand on top of the world.

She grew up in one of the most isolated valleys in Pakistan. She started climbing as a child, the way other children start cycling. By 22 she had planted the national flag on Everest. Nine years later she did the same on K2, a mountain that many climbers consider harder and more dangerous.

Her story is about sport. It is also about something bigger. She has said that she climbs for the women of her country.

Samina Baig did not only climb mountains. She changed what Pakistani girls are told they can do.

Her village: Shimshal

Samina Baig comes from Shimshal. It is a village in the Gojal area of upper Hunza, in Gilgit-Baltistan, near the border with China.

A few facts explain why this place produces climbers.

• It sits at about 3,100 metres above sea level. People there live and work at a height where visitors from the plains get breathless.
• For most of its history it could be reached only on foot, after days of walking along narrow paths above a river gorge. A jeep road arrived only in the early 2000s.
• Its people herd yaks and goats on high pastures in summer. Crossing passes and glaciers is ordinary work, not adventure.
• Many of Pakistan’s best high-altitude porters and climbers come from this one valley. It is sometimes called the valley of mountaineers.

So she did not discover mountains as a tourist. She was born among them.

Early life and her brother

According to her public biography, she was born on 19 September 1990. That makes her 36 in 2026.

Her biography says she first went up into the hills at the age of four. Her serious training began at 15. Her teacher was her elder brother, Mirza Ali, who is a climber and expedition organiser himself.

That partnership is the centre of her story. In a conservative society, a brother chose to train his sister to climb, to travel abroad with her and to stand beside her on summits. Both of them have described their climbs as a message about equality between men and women.

She became a professional climber in 2009 and has also worked as a mountain guide and expedition leader in the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush.

First peaks at home

Before Everest she proved herself on Pakistani mountains.

Look at the last row. A failed attempt belongs in the story too. Mountaineering is a sport where turning back is often the right decision, and where pride kills people. Climbers who last learn that early.

Everest, 19 May 2013

Then came the climb that made her name.

On 19 May 2013 she reached the summit of Mount Everest, the highest mountain on earth at about 8,849 metres. She was 22. She was the first Pakistani woman to do it, and only the third Pakistani of either sex.

Several details made the climb special.

• The year. It was the sixtieth anniversary year of the first ascent of Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
• The company. She climbed alongside two Indian sisters, the twins Tashi and Nungshi Malik. On the summit, the flags of Pakistan and India were held up side by side as a message of peace.
• The last stretch. Her brother Mirza Ali stopped a few hundred metres below the top and let her go on without him. He wanted the picture of a Pakistani woman reaching the summit on her own strength.
• The length. The whole expedition took 48 days.

Reports differ on one point: whether she used bottled oxygen near the top. Most Everest climbers do. One Pakistani newspaper reported that she did not, while an Indian newspaper reported that she had planned to.

The President of Pakistan at the time, Asif Ali Zardari, congratulated her.

The Seven Summits, 2013 to 2014

Everest was only the first of seven. The Seven Summits are the highest mountains on each of the seven continents. Climbing all of them is one of the classic challenges of the sport.

She and her brother did the other six in eight months.

On 24 July 2014, standing on Elbrus in Russia, she completed the set. She was 23. She was the first Pakistani woman to climb all seven.

The same year she received the President’s Award for Pride of Performance, one of Pakistan’s highest civil honours.

K2: the hardest one

For a Pakistani climber, one mountain matters more than any other. K2 stands on the border of Pakistan and China. At about 8,611 metres it is the second-highest mountain in the world. Climbers call it the Savage Mountain.

Why K2 is harder than Everest

She had wanted K2 for years. A planned expedition in 2021 did not bring her the summit.

In July 2022 she tried again and succeeded. News agencies reported the date as 22 July 2022. She became the first Pakistani woman to stand on top of K2. Another Pakistani woman, Naila Kiani, reached the summit the same day, and an Iranian climber became the first woman from her country to do so.

For Pakistan it was a moment of real pride. The country’s own great mountain had finally been climbed by its own daughters.

Nanga Parbat, 2023

A year later, in July 2023, she climbed Nanga Parbat, about 8,126 metres high and the ninth-highest mountain in the world. It stands entirely inside Pakistan and has such a deadly history that it is nicknamed the Killer Mountain. She and Naila Kiani were among the first Pakistani women to reach its summit.

The 8,000-metre peaks

There are only fourteen mountains on earth higher than 8,000 metres. Five of them are in Pakistan: K2, Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum II. With Everest, K2 and Nanga Parbat, she has climbed three of the fourteen.

How a big climb actually works

Films make it look like one long walk uphill. A real expedition to a mountain like K2 is closer to a siege. Here are the stages.

1. The approach. The team walks for about a week up a glacier to reach base camp. Porters carry tents, food and fuel for two months.
2. Base camp. This is home for the whole expedition. It is already higher than any mountain in Europe.
3. Fixing the route. The strongest climbers go ahead and fix ropes on the steep sections. Everyone else clips into those ropes later.
4. Rotations. The climbers go up to Camp 1, sleep, and come back down. Then to Camp 2, and down again. Each trip teaches the body to cope with thinner air.
5. Waiting. The team watches the weather forecasts for a few calm days in a row.
6. The summit push. When the window opens, the climbers go up camp by camp and leave the last tent around midnight. They aim to reach the top by morning and be back down before dark.
7. The descent. Most accidents happen on the way down, when people are exhausted.

Words climbers use

A hard year: K2 base camp, 2024

Mountaineering does not always go to plan. In the summer of 2024 she was back at K2 for another expedition. In early July she became seriously ill at base camp and had to give up. The army’s media office said it had rescued her from base camp.

She recovered. But the episode was a reminder that altitude is dangerous even for the most experienced climber, and that there is no shame in stopping.

The South Pole, December 2025

Her most recent achievement was not a climb at all.

In December 2025 she travelled to Antarctica with an expedition company. She reached the Union Glacier camp on 6 December. From there she set out on skis, pulling a sled, to cover the last degree to the South Pole. She arrived on 14 December 2025.

She is the first Pakistani to ski the last degree to the South Pole, according to press reports and her own account.

What does “the last degree” mean?

The earth is measured in degrees of latitude. The South Pole is at 90 degrees south. “Skiing the last degree” means starting at 89 degrees and covering the final stretch on foot and skis. That is about 111 kilometres across flat ice, in bitter cold and constant daylight, dragging everything you need behind you.

The Explorers Grand Slam

The South Pole is part of a larger plan. She has said she is working towards the Explorers Grand Slam. To complete it, a person must:

1. Climb all Seven Summits. She has done this.
2. Reach the South Pole. She has done this.
3. Reach the North Pole. This remains.

Only a small number of people in the world have finished it. No Pakistani has.

Honours and public roles

• Pride of Performance (2014). A presidential award for outstanding achievement.
• UNDP National Goodwill Ambassador (2018). The United Nations Development Programme named her to speak for its work in Pakistan, especially on climate and on women.
• Brand ambassador for the Special Communications Organization, the telecom operator that serves Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir.
• A film. A documentary called Beyond the Heights tells the story of her Everest expedition.

She uses these platforms to talk about two things. One is girls’ education and sport. The other is the mountains themselves. Pakistan’s glaciers are melting, and the people of valleys like hers are the first to face the floods that follow.

Why she matters beyond sport

It is worth being clear about how unusual her path was.

• She came from a village, not a city. Most Pakistani athletes who reach the world stage come through schools, clubs or the army. She came through her family.
• She is a woman in an outdoor sport. In much of the country, girls are discouraged from playing any sport in public, let alone travelling abroad to climb.
• She had family support. She always credits her brother and parents. Her story is as much about a family’s decision as about one person’s talent.
• She keeps the flag in the picture. Every summit photograph shows the green and white flag. For many Pakistanis that image is rare good news.

Other Pakistani climbers worth knowing

She is the most famous woman in the sport, but she is part of a longer story.

• Nazir Sabir became the first Pakistani to climb Everest, in 2000.
• Muhammad Ali Sadpara was a national hero of the mountains. He died on K2 in February 2021 during a winter attempt.
• Sirbaz Khan and Shehroze Kashif have each climbed all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-metre peaks.
• Naila Kiani has climbed more of the 8,000-metre peaks than any other Pakistani woman and reached K2’s summit on the same day as Samina Baig.

Most of these climbers come from Gilgit-Baltistan. That small region supplies almost all of Pakistan’s mountaineers.

What admirers and doubters say

Admirers call her the pride of Pakistan, and the phrase has stuck. They see proof that talent exists in every corner of the country and only needs a chance.

Doubters raise fair questions too. Some point out that the Seven Summits and last-degree trips are now offered by commercial companies to clients who can pay, and are not the same as pioneering climbs. Others say the state celebrates one star while local climbers and porters from the same valleys, who carry the loads and fix the ropes, remain poor and unknown.

Both points can be accepted without taking anything away from her. Commercial support does not climb the mountain for you.

Timeline: Samina Baig at a glance

If you came here from our politics pages, you may also like our guide, Pakistan’s politics explained.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Samina Baig” — biography as last edited on 7 October 2026; used for dates of climbs that still need checking against mountaineering records.
• PBS NewsHour / Associated Press, “Female climbers from Pakistan, Iran make history by reaching K2 summit” — 22 July 2022.
• Arab News, “Army rescues ailing Pakistani mountaineer Samina Baig from K2 base camp” — July 2024.
• Geo News, “Star mountaineer Samina Baig reaches final degree of South Pole in historic expedition” — December 2025.
• Daily Times, “Samina Baig becomes first Pakistani at South Pole” — December 2025.
• Pakistan Observer, “Mountaineer Samina Baig becomes first Pakistani to ski to last degree of South Pole” — December 2025.
• Gulf News, “Pakistan’s first female Mount Everest conqueror sets new goals” — 2013.