A 13-year-old California boy has set out for Nepal to pursue his dream of becoming the youngest person to scale Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain.

Jordan Romero aims to reach the summits of the highest peaks on all seven continents. The idea came to the teenager in 2005 when he was 9 and saw a school mural of the seven summits.

"I just want to show kids how to be healthy; to get outside, exercise and make good choices about the food and drinks they put in their mouths," Romero said in a posting on a web site named after him.

Romero, a native of Big Bear Lake in San Bernardino County, stopped to visit friends near Los Angeles on Monday before boarding a flight bound for Hong Kong.

He and his team members are expected to arrive in Asia on Tuesday. They will continue toward Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, and from there set off for the Nepalese-Chinese border where the Himalayas are located.

With the help of his divorced parents and his father's girlfriend, Romero already has scaled five of the mountains on his list, including Alaska's Mount McKinley, which many climbers consider to be a more technical climb than Everest.

He became the youngest climber of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak at 5,895 meters, at the age of 10.

After climbing Everest, which kills climbers almost every year, Romero was to head to Antarctica this winter in an attempt to conquer Mount Vinson and complete his seven-summit project by the end of the year.

Guides who have experience with Everest say Jordan probably will be safe, as long as he and his team pay close attention to how their bodies are reacting to the high altitude and low oxygen conditions near the peak.

The current record holder for the youngest to climb Everest is Temba Tsheri of Nepal who was 16 and lost five fingers during his 2001 ascent due to frostbite.