Watch Vanessa O’Brien’s compilation video of the Explorers Grand Slam, where she climbs the Seven Summits and the North and South Poles. Extreme mountaineer and Thomson Advisory Board member Vanessa O’Brien has a seemingly endless list of accomplishments. She’s summited the Seven Summits (which includes Kilimanjaro and Everest), and she’s the first woman to set a speed…
There are a lot of ways to measure a mountain’s prowess. Overall height is a common yardstick (and hopefully not determined BY a yardstick), as is technical difficulty, but there’s one measure all but the most mountain-obsessed may not have heard of: topographic prominence. Topographic prominence is the height between the summit and the lowest contour line circling the mountain in question and no other higher mountain.
Climbing Kilimanjaro with Thomson Safaris was an absolute pleasure. I couldn’t have wished for a better support team for my ‘7th’ summit! Vanessa O’Brien completed the Seven Summits challenge with Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa and plans on completing the Explorer’s Grand Slam when she reaches the North Pole next month.