Baby Munro-bagger should inspire us all – leader comment

Lara Mills pictured at the Old Man of Storr on Skye. She reached the top of her first Munro - Ben Lomond - aged just four-months-old.

Baby Lara Mills reached the summit of her first Munro at the age of just four months.

She’d climbed Mount Everest before she was even born!

There’s a claim to fame and no mistake. Okay, so her mum actually walked up the equivalent height of the world’s tallest mountain – rather than the Himalayan peak itself – while pregnant with Lara Mills, but the youngster has since gone on to scale her first Scottish mountain at six weeks old and bag her first Munro at four months with a little help from mum, Deborah MacDonald, and dad Scott Mills.

Lara is said to “squeal” with excitement while out in the hills and her parents credit her happy nature and sound sleeping to her outdoor lifestyle.

While some hillwalkers have expressed concerns about a mountaineering baby, her parents stressed that “her safety is always our primary concern” and that they avoided ridges or other tricky terrain that was “not suitable for babies”.

As MacDonald pointed out, modern life can easily be spent with a “bubble of technology”. She added it was “important for children to be outdoors and play outside” – but that’s also true for adults too.