Adventure athlete Samar Khan has made history by ascending Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe, and descending the 5,642-meter peak by snowboarding, becoming the first Pakistani woman to achieve this milestone.
Hailing from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Dir district, Samar reached the summit at 10 a.m. local time and proudly hoisted Pakistan’s flag. She is the first Pakistani woman to snowboard down Mount Elbrus.
“I’m pleased to announce that I have successfully climbed Europe’s highest peak, Mt. Elbrus, and snowboarded down, becoming the first Pakistani to pioneer this feat in the world of action sports,” she wrote on Instagram. “I set out for the summit push around 3 a.m. and reached the top by 10 a.m. with a green flag, followed by an exhilarating snowboarding descent from Elbrus,” she added, expressing gratitude for the support she received.
Notably, Samar is also the first woman in the world to have cycled on the third-largest non-polar glacial system, comprising Biafo Glacier and Godwin Austen Glacier, in the Karakoram mountains of Gilgit Baltistan. She is the first Pakistani to have cycled on the roof of Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro, in 2017.
Despite her achievements, her sports endeavors were initially not recognized in her own country. However, the ESPNW Global Sports Mentoring Program selected her to be mentored by top sports executives in the United States. After training with Burton Snowboards in Vermont, she excelled as a snowboarder and founded her initiative, ‘Samar Camp’, offering sports camps like mountain biking, backpacking, and snowboarding for girls and women in Pakistan.
Samar has won several accolades, including a silver medal in the Sadia Khan Championship in 2022 and the Red Bull Homerun snowboarding category in 2021. She also summited an unclimbed peak of 5,610 meters in Shimshal, Gilgit Baltistan, and snowboarded down, with the mountain later named ‘Ghar e Samar’ (Pashto) in her honor.
