Samantha is deceiving. I mean, she seems like your pretty typical 17 year-old — sweet, quiet, interesting, clearly intelligent — but not what I would ever guess was one of the most accomplished young mountain climbers in the world. To climb any of the mountains she’s climbed (Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, Elbrus, McKinley, Kosciuszko, and Vinson Massif) requires an enormous amount of peristence, drive … and being just plain TOUGH.

But meeting her today, it’s hard to believe any of that … she’s happy, and — like I said — deceiving. I don’t really know how to describe it, but Samantha Larson’s “being” makes it seem, somehow, that climbing those mountains must be easy. (And since I’ve climbed the easiest of the bunch, I know they are NOT easy.)

Anyway … fun shoot. Keep Samantha in your thoughts for the next 6 weeks. Literally hours after our shoot, she and her dad jumped on a plane to Kathmandu … no big deal, now they’re just going to climb Cho Oyu, the world’s 6th highest peak at 26,906 feet. (In fact, she was going to get her hair chopped off, which is why we had to keep our shoot fairly short.) Keep your eye on this girl … looks can deceive!