the first woman to climb the Seven Summits in 295 days and is the first British or American woman to summit K2. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and an Honorary Advisory Board Member of the Scientific and Exploration Society.
O’Brien applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, To the Greatest Heights: Facing Danger, Finding Humility, and Climbing a Mountain of Truth, and reported the following:
From page 99:Visit Vanessa O'Brien's website.When the mountain is nearly vertical, you may opt to do something called front pointing – slamming the metal teeth on the front of the crampon into the ice or snow – but you do it sparingly, because it doesn’t take too long to burn out your calves and shins. Staggered by how hard it was initially, I tried to calm myself down as everyone else zipped off into the sunset. After struggling through for a while, I looked up and felt an unpleasant bolt of panic. I was alone. The ghostly white penitents thronged around me, serrated heads bowed to pray, dripping and whispering.Page 99 falls within Chapter 8 which is the first chapter in Part II: Climb and Punishment. Chapter 8 is the story of my first summit of an 8,000-meter peak, and because it is my first, I am not as experienced as the other climbers. The page 99 test lets the reader know the content of the book contains a first-person account of climbing. It also gives the reader a fair sense of the writing style in that on this page there is a hint of humor and self-deprecation.
“Hey!” I called. “Hey, where are you guys?”
For a terrifying moment, there was no answer but the Gregorian chant of the wind. Then Daniel appeared. He waved from the top of a formation that seemed miles away.
“Hey!” I waved back and tried to keep my voice level. “Wait up!” He gave me a thumbs-up and disappeared again.
“Keep calm. Keep up.” My own take on British climbing motivation. My mind raced through a number of mini mantras. “I am Scylla the rock—Marathon Man—I can endure any pain.”
We did this again the next day and the day after that. Over the boulders and through the penitentes, back through the penitentes and over the boulders. By the end of the third day, I had my mojo back and was keeping up with the team, but I wasn’t over- confident. That first day kept me humble. I was probably praying harder than the penitentes were.
A local lama came to perform the Puja ceremony, and once the ritual was completed, the Sherpa were ready to climb. However, the next morning there was a 6.9 magnitude earthquake in India near the Nepalese border, and it was strong enough that we felt it in Tibet. Daniel made a reconnaissance climb up to Camp 1 at 21,000 feet and found that landscape significantly changed.
However, from a strategic point of view, the page 99 test fails to capture the essence of the book reviews that cite how daring, insightful and inspirational the book is. That is because many of the powerful back stories take place over several climbs to avoid subjecting the reader to repetitive acclimatization trips up and down the mountain. From a practical perspective, the page 99 test fails to fully explain some technical items on page 99 because they are explained earlier, terms like crampons or penitentes. Once readers understand that penitentes are sculpted snow and ice formations up to fifty feet high that looked like parishioners on their way to mass to early explorers, some of the backhanded jokes make more sense on page 99… I was probably praying harder than the penitentes were.
--Marshal Zeringue
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