THE EXCITING LIFE OF VANESSA O'BRIEN
In 2020, a tiny submarine1 took mountain climber Vanessa O'Brien down to the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean — the deepest region on Earth. This made O'Brien the first woman to go to both the lowest and the highest places on the planet: Eight years earlier, she had climbed to the top of Mount Everest.(lines 1–4)
O'Brien's latest record2 joins several others. She was the first American woman to reach the top of K2, the hardest mountain in the world to climb. She was also the first woman to complete the Explorers Grand Slam (EGS) in less than a year. Everyone who attempts this extremely difficult challenge must climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents3, and ski 100 kilometers to the North and South Poles. Only about 50 people have ever succeeded in doing so.(lines 5–9)
After O'Brien completed the EGS, a special event was organized in New York to celebrate her achievement4 and that of six other climbers. It was there that she met Victor Vescovo, a businessman and mountain climber. That meeting would eventually lead her to the Challenger Deep, because Vescovo had a plan: to explore the five deepest regions in the Earth's oceans, including the Challenger Deep. Almost nothing is known about those places, and he very much wanted to change that.(lines 10–14)
In 2019, as part of his plan, Vescovo funded5 the building of a small submarine that was able to function under the enormous water pressure deep down in the ocean. That year, he reached all the regions he had planned to explore, and in the following year, he invited O'Brien to join him on a future expedition6 to the Challenger Deep. She immediately agreed. During the three hours they spent there, they mapped7 the ocean floor and collected organisms and rocks for researchers to study.(lines 15–20)
In a recent interview, O’Brien described the dangers involved both in climbing Mount Everest and in going to the Challenger Deep. It seems that such challenges are exactly what she has been looking for since she lost her job at an international bank ten years ago. At age 45, she decided not to work in an office again, and instead to go in search of a more exciting life. She certainly seems to have found it.(lines 21–25)