Michigan-born explorer Vanessa O'Brien credits Slovak grandparents for shaping her journey

Two Slovak women recently set new mountaineering records. On May 12, Lucia Janičová became the first Slovak woman to scale Everest. Then on May 21, her fellow countrywoman, Lenka Poláčková, achieved the same feat, but in her case without the use of supplemental oxygen.

But while the pair’s achievements are incredible, there has already been one woman with Slovak roots who made it to the peak of the world’s highest mountain.

English-American Vanessa O’Brien, reached the top of Everest on May 19, 2012.

Vanessa O'Brien (20 photos)

It was just one of a long list of milestones the financier, explorer, aquanaut, astronaut, author, public speaker and multiple Guinness World Record holder says she has managed to achieve, at least in part, because of her Slovak roots.

She credits her Slovak ancestors with some of the strength, endurance and abilities which have helped her set records. And that is why, she says, she is continually looking for information about them.

“I want to know why I have been able to do the things I have done. That’s the nature versus nurture question,” O’Brien told The Slovak Spectator. The blonde, solidly-built woman, who turns 60 in December, visited Slovakia to launch the Slovak translation of her book To The Greatest Heights: Facing Danger, Finding Humility, and Climbing a Mountain of Truth.

Repeating history

The book opens with a scene of her searching for the remains of two mountaineers, a father and son, on the slopes of K2.

The world’s second-highest mountain, K2 is considered more difficult to climb than Everest. The pair died in 2013, three years prior to O’Brien’s own second attempt to scale the peak.

She understood why it was so important to their surviving wife and mother that the remains were found because her own family had experience of tragic loss. Her grandmother lost her son – O’Brien’s uncle - in WWII. Later, O’Brien’s younger brother Ben died in an accident. He had gone for a swim when a speedboat with a bunch of young people came rushing towards him. He tried to sink and swim under the boat, but he was caught in the boat’s propeller. His body was found three days later.

In her book, O’Brien recalls how this tragedy ruined what was already a troubled family. She says her parents were too young to raise a family when she was born in 1964, and life at home was marked by an atmosphere of “drinking, shouting and fighting, throwing things around in a howling, uncontrolled whirlwind of rage”.

Her parents moved out of the house straight after her brother died, leaving her, at the age of 16, to take care of herself. They divorced shortly afterwards.

“My mother blamed her mother for spending her whole life worrying about the death of her son and not paying attention to her,” she said. “But she did the same thing to me. She never saw that history was repeating itself.”

When O’Brien was 18 years old, her father sold their family house in Michigan and she bought her own home in New York.

Real explorers

O’Brien’s Slovak roots come from her mother’s side. Her great- grandparents and grandparents emigrated from eastern Slovakia – they hailed from Košice, Prešov and Michalovce - to America in 1878.

She calls her great-grandparents and grandparents ‘original explorers’, saying they had the courage to take a risk and bear the short-term consequences of bad work conditions and separation from their families to build a better future for their descendants.

“I’m who I am because I received a lot of love from my Slovak grandparents. They nurtured curiosity, hope and faith in me. Along with a sense of humour, these have been some of my best survival tools,” O’Brien writes in the introduction to the Slovak version of the book.

Her family’s story is similar to that of many 19th century immigrants to America. Her grandfather was a miner, who initially came alone to the U.S.A before returning with his wife and her mother.

“They sacrificed a lot, but every following generation was better off,” she said.

Growing up in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, she was close to her grandparents.

“They taught me values and ethics, what’s right and wrong, good and bad,” she recalled.

Her mother never learnt Slovak, nor did Vanessa herself. But she can remember her grandparents taking her to a local Slovak church. Masses were held either in Slovak or Latin – and both were equally incomprehensible to her. But the church itself was important to her - just before it was pulled down, she took a piece of marble from its walls which she took with her around the world into every home she lived in.

Don’t let others define who are you

In her book, O’Brien also has a message for young people, especially girls, based on her own experiences from childhood.

“I was sterilised before I even had sex for the first time,” she discloses. She said her mother, who was terrified of teenage pregnancy, had told her since she was 12-years-old: don’t get pregnant, don’t have kids, don’t waste your life.

It was her mother who arranged for O’Brien to be sterilised. O’Brien says that as she processed what had happened to her, there was some relief in knowing that she would be spared the same devastating losses her mother and grandmother had suffered, and she refused to let the fact that she would never have kids become something that would overwhelm her life.

“I want people to know that if things happen to you when you’re young, even something like this, or for girls in Africa who are circumcised, don’t let these things define who you are,” she said. “Don’t let it limit you.”

O’Brien said she had wanted to share what had happened to her so she could help other people.

“A lot of girls today struggle with body issues,” she said, adding that as a child she was fat and that, again arranged by her mother, she underwent breast reduction.

Financial career

O’Brien obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from New York University School of Professional Studies and an Executive MBA in Finance from New York University Stern School of Business.

She went on to make a name for herself in the financial sector, which at the time was a completely male world, working as Director of Finance and Business Development for Morgan Stanley, Barclays Bank, and the Bank of America.

She was in London when the financial crisis hit in 2008. She lost her job, moved to Hong Kong, where her husband was working at the time, and for the first time in her life, she had nothing to do.

It was a state she found she could not endure for long.

During a meeting with friends over a few glasses of tequila, somebody joked that she should climb Everest.

Though she had enjoyed some sports, O’Brien had never tried mountaineering.

“At first I laughed and thought, what a ridiculous suggestion,” she recalled. “But the next day I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

After months of training, precise planning, climbing (and sometimes failing) smaller peaks, she successfully scaled Everest in 2012.

It was not her first time on the mountain, though. Two years earlier she had gone, planning to reach the Camp 2 at 6,400 meters. Things didn’t go quite as she expected, and she describes the experience as a major lesson to her and her ego.

Everest taught her that she could not “copy and paste” her skills and strategies for coping with challenges from her professional life when she was on the mountain.

“We are taught to be in control, hired to take care of this organisation, and that we are the boss,” she said. “In nature, you are never the boss. Mother nature comes along and says ‘you fool’ and knocks you down.”

She said on Everest she had to let go of her ego.

“It was hard to have the humility to listen and understand that I had to change,” she said.

Climbing Everest drove her to do more - not only scaling other peaks, but setting records.

She became the fastest woman to climb the Seven Summits in 295 days, and the first person to get nearest to and farthest from the earth’s core - Challenger Deep and the summit of Chimborazo. She also became the first woman to complete the Four Poles Challenge.

K2 challenge

But it was K2 which really tested her and it was only on her third attempt in 2017 that she made it to the top, earning her the record for the oldest woman to reach the summit, at 52 years old.

At the time, she had been mountaineering for less than eight years.

“The first year you have a lot of people supporting you, saying you can do this. The second year less people support you. The third year is very tough as all the cheerleaders are gone. But that’s when you have the most experience,” she said.

She also refused to call not managing to reach the summit a failure. “One of the things I like to say is that you can’t fail, unless you give up.”

“When people succeed where other people don’t, usually they’re doing it for a reason greater than themselves. If you just do it for yourself, it’s not usually enough. Not in an environment like that. That environment is so cruel, so harsh and unforgiving,” she said.

It was other women who inspired her to return again and again and finally reach K2’s summit.

During her first unsuccessful attempt to climb K2 in 2015, she had the flag of UN Women with her to raise at the summit. When she went to return it to UN Women, the organisation gave it back to her and told her: “no, you’re the one”.

“They had more faith in me than I had in myself,” she said, adding that the words made her want to climb K2 to send a signal to prove what women can achieve, no matter the challenges they face.

Film plans

O’Brien says she still has lots more planned for the future. Apart from exploring other parts of our planet as well as participating in studies on climate change, she would also like to see her book made into a movie in the hope that it will reach a bigger audience and help people.

“The most important message for me is that when you are stuck, you must take a step,” she explained, adding that people sometimes do not know that they are strong enough to make the decision to take the next step in their lives.

“It’s about having self-belief and being confident that you can do whatever you set your mind to. With these things I did, I didn’t have experience, but I never was afraid to try.”