{"id":30008,"date":"2016-08-02T08:00:55","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T15:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/illinois-girl-is-youngest-to-hit-48-states-highest-peaks\/"},"modified":"2016-08-02T08:00:55","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T15:00:55","slug":"illinois-girl-is-youngest-to-hit-48-states-highest-peaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/illinois-girl-is-youngest-to-hit-48-states-highest-peaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois girl is youngest to hit 48 states&#8217; highest peaks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>NAPERVILLE, Ill. <\/strong>\u2014 A 12-year-old Naperville resident is the youngest girl to climb to the highest point in each of the lower 48 states.<\/p>\n<p>The Highpointers Club, a membership organization for hikers climbing the highest peaks in each state, confirmed Lucy Westlake\u2019s record, the Daily Herald reported. The club said the previous record was set by a 17-year-old Kristen Kelliher of Vermont in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Club member and Highpointers Foundation Lead Director Dave Covill said achieving this goal at an early age is an amazing feat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s extremely impressive when you consider that the previous record-holder was 17 and the third place was 18,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Lucy\u2019s first climb was on a more than 1,300-foot mountain in Michigan\u2019s Upper Peninsula near her family\u2019s cabin. She ran, climbed and explored on the 6-kilometer route.<\/p>\n<p>When Lucy was 7 and living in Kentucky in 2011, her family climbed the state\u2019s highest location, the more than 4,100-foot Black Mountain. The next year, she tackled 13 more climbs.<\/p>\n<p>She broke the record after climbing Kings Peak in Utah this year. Lucy\u2019s next goal is Denali in Alaska.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s so fun to be able to see the country like that,\u201d Lucy said. \u201cBeing the highest thing in the state is cool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rodney Westlake, Lucy\u2019s father, said the family\u2019s well-traveled lifestyle allowed Lucy to climb many mountains without even making it a goal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve always had a love of the outdoors and wanted to raise my kids with that love,\u201d said Amy Westlake, Lucy\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n<p>Rodney Westlake said his daughter is very athletic. When her family lived in Kentucky, Lucy competed in state championship races and placed third in a 2015 regional cross-country race. During her first year training as a competitive triathlete since her family moved to Naperville in January, she qualified for the USA Triathlon Youth Elite National Championship.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe has unlimited endurance,\u201d her father said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NAPERVILLE, Ill. \u2014 A 12-year-old Naperville resident is the youngest girl to climb to the highest point in each of the lower 48 states. The Highpointers Club, a membership organization for hikers climbing the highest peaks in each state, confirmed Lucy Westlake\u2019s record, the Daily Herald reported. The club said the previous record was set [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30008"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}