An interior designer from Toronto, Urszula Tokarska, has reached the top of Mount Everest, becoming the first Canadian woman to climb the highest peaks on all seven continents and the third to conquer Everest, her supporters say.

"This is thrilling. This is a dream of hers," a Toronto friend, Deb Trouten, told CBC Online on Thursday.

Tokarska, 42, appears to have beaten Ottawa teacher Peggy Foster, who is on Everest in quest of the same distinction. Short of food and cooking fuel, Foster and her companions planned a last-chance push for the summit on the weekend, she reported on Tuesday in an online journal.

Tokarska, climbing with a group of Americans and their Sherpa guides, reached the highest point on the planet just after dawn on Thursday, according to a diary posted by team leader Jim Williams, a Wyoming mountaineer, on his website.

In a 3 a.m. dispatch, he wrote: "The latest is that Urszula is now on the South Summit waiting for sunrise to go to the summit. The hour wait will be cold but sunrise will be fantastic."

Two hours later he wrote: "At 5 a.m. Nima Tashi called to say that Nima Tashi, Urszula Tokarska and Pema Temba were on the summit of Mt. Everest."

And at 9:40 a.m.: "The final members of the summit team have arrived at the summit: Neal Mueller, Lhakpa Gyltsen, and Pasang Yella. It is a fine day on top as the first summit party waited more than 2 hours on the summit taking pictures."

Tokarska, who was born in Poland and arrived in Canada in 1988, almost notched her Everest climb last year, but was turned back by a blinding snowstorm about 70 vertical metres from the top.

Pursuing her seven-summits goal, Tokarska also climbed Mount McKinley in Alaska, Aconcagua in Argentina, Elbrus in Russia, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Kosciusko in Australia and Antarctica's Vinson Massif.

"Urszula is not only one of the most creative designers I know, she is also one of the most determined people I have ever met," her business partner, Toronto architect Stephen Pile, said last year.

In 1986, Canadian climber Sharon Wood became the first woman from North America to climb Mount Everest.

Ottawa's Shaunna Burke became the second Canadian woman to climb to the summit of Everest on Monday.