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To the Greatest Heights - Vanessa O'Brien

To the Greatest Heights - Vanessa O'Brien

Vanessa O'Brien

Regular price £11.00 GBP
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You might think that you have to start mountaineering early in life if you want to climb the world's highest mountains. That you have to know from a young age you want to be an 'Explorer', if you want to complete the Explorer's Grand Slam of reaching the highest point on the planet as well as both Poles. Vanessa O'Brien is proof that isn't the case. 

From the back cover:

When Vanessa O'Brien was made redundant in 2008 as part of the recession, she moved to Hong Kong with her husband for his career and resigned herself to being 'just the wife'. There she was, aged 46, bored, uninspired, unemployed.

Was this going to be how she was going to live the rest of her life? One night in the infamous Kee Club, over shots of tequila, a friend suggested O'Brien climb Everest, and that was the start of an epic journey she never looked back from as she climbed Everest, K2 and many other mountains. This is her inspirational story. As O'Brien says, she couldn't explain to her readers how she got to the top of K2 at the age of 52 without being honest about what came before.

In To the Greatest Heights, she reveals the trials and tribulations of her difficult childhood, and the result is a life-affirming book that shows how she achieved these climbs in spite of and because of her past. To read To the Greatest Heights is to know that there is a path to overcoming the worst of what happens to us, a path that helps us reach the summit of our lives too, whatever our age.

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  • Telling women's stories

    You can't be what you can't see. We hope that reading about women's adventures will inspire more women to explore the edges of their comfort zones. You don't need a beard to climb a mountain or cross an ice cap!

  • Supporting female authors

    The 'adventure' bookshelf is often dominated by books about and by male climbers and explorers. We aim to raise the profile of books written from a broader range of perspectives, especially female authors.

  • Female specific advice

    There is much less research and training advice tailored to female specific physiology, but this is changing. We aim to help re-balance the gender disparity and highlight the advances in this field.