The Strange “Case” of Vanessa O’Brien

Guest post by Roccia Innerkofler

Someone sent me this book review for Vanessa O’Brien’s book The Greatest Heights: Facing Danger, Finding Humility, and Climbing a Mountain of Truth (2021) and I thought I’d post it here

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One of the internet literary sites I follow recommended I listen to a podcast about “the greatest mountaineer of her generation” and also “the most adventurous woman of her generation.” So, I listened. She was indeed described in these terms, and she accepted the praise without qualifications. She was, of course, promoting her book, The Greatest Heights: Facing Danger, Finding Humility, and Climbing a Mountain of Truth. The author’s name, the purported author’s name, is Vanessa O’Brien.

Her main claims to fame, and claiming fame is very much central here, are “fastest woman to complete the Seven Summits,” and the “first American and British woman to successfully climb K2.” Of course, Brits Alison Hargreaves and Julie Tullis (actual climbers) successfully climbed K2, but perished on the descent. I think she has been “corrected” enough times on this point that she sometimes amends the “successfully climbed” with “and safely descended” to the K2 climb. I do wonder what actual British folks think of this though. O’Brien was raised in Grosse Pointe, Michigan and acquired her “dual citizenship” through marriage. According to reports, she continues to live part-time in London.

She hiked up Kilimanjaro first. Then, after doing the next six of the seven summits, she realized if she did Kilimanjaro again, she could claim to have done the seven in “record time.” So she did. This desperation for records, particularly public records/world records/Guinness records just feels kind of . . . sad. Go get some actual alpine skills and earn a Piolet d’or if awards matter so much to you. P.S. It’s not something you can buy.

O’Brien is clearly a highly-motivated, driven human. In addition to the seven summits, she also climbed Cho Oyo, Shishapangmga and one other 8000 meter peak, I forget which. In addition, she made two attempts on K2 before succeeding. Unquestionably, only an extraordinary person could have succeeded on these.

But why does “say what you did and how you did it” become so . . . complicated? In this case, it’s by seemingly not understanding that a client can’t be the greatest mountaineer of her generation, much less the greatest explorer.

The tally looks like about seven attempts of 8,000 meter peaks in a very short period of time. You can do the math as well as I can. If the average cost of these climbs is $65 K per climb . . . . Well, that’s a lot of discretionary income.

The book is compulsively readable. Moreso, I would guess, if you are able to take it at face value. In her acknowledgments she thanks a fellow writer for all her help. But one wonders how much help? A little research reveals that person is a professional ghostwriter. Ghostwriters, like mountain guides, know which side of their bread is buttered. They operate, by necessity, by the Fight Club Dictum, the first rule of which is “Do not talk about Fight Club.”

I could probably live with the whole thing a lot easier if she amended the subtitle, to “How the World’s Wealthiest Client Searched for Humility but Never Found it, and Got Lost on the Mountain of Truth.”

Roccia Innerkofler