Monday, May 02, 2005

An Oswego native climbing Mount Everest with his brother died Sunday when he fell into a deep crevasse.

Mike O'Brien, 39, slipped as he and his brother Chris were climbing down from a camp at 20,341 feet to their base camp, said their father, Dr. David O'Brien, of Oswego. The pair wanted to be the first American brothers to reach the summit together.

Chris O'Brien, 32, helped recover his brother's body.

"Michael knew the risk," Dr. O'Brien said. "He did it for a good cause."

The brothers - whose mother and sister died from complications from Huntington's disease - were climbing Mount Everest to try to raise $100,000 for the Hereditary Disease Foundation.

"We prayed to God that they'd be safe," Dr. O'Brien said. "I guess God knows best."

O'Brien was the second climber to die on Mount Everest in three days. Professor Sean Egan, 63, of the University of Ottawa, died Friday of cardiac arrest while climbing down theÕ7Mike O'Brien Õ slope of the mountain.

The brothers' 64-day expedition, which began in early April, was to take them up the south face of Mount Everest. They hoped to reach the summit, at 29,035 feet, in mid- to late-May.

Saturday night, Mike O'Brien called his girlfriend, Rebecca Stodola, in

Seattle to tell her he was doing well and update her on their adventure. Stodola telephoned Dr. O'Brien on Sunday morning and relayed the happy update.

Five minutes later, however, a distraught Chris telephoned his dad from the mountain.

"Christopher obviously was pretty shaken up. They were inseparable," Dr. O'Brien said. "Chris was too broken up to talk."

"Mike and Chris were so prepared and so in shape. They believed they were going to do it together," said their sister, Kathryn Caltabiano, of Schroeppel. "If anybody was prepared to conquer the dangers of that mountain, it was him."

The brothershad already scaled 25 mountains, including Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro, America's Mount Rainier and Tibet's Cho Oyu.

Because of severe weather and a fear of avalanches, a group of climbers including the O'Briens was hiking Sunday from Everest's Camp II down to the base camp at about 17,500 feet.

It was not known Sunday where on the mountain the accident occurred. But to reach the base camp, the brothers would have had to use ropes and ladders to cross crevasses in the Khumbu Ice Fall, an area with shifting house-sized blocks of ice.

That part of the mountain has claimed at least 19 lives the most deadly part, according to www.mnteverest.net.

A total of 2,249 climbers have reached the summit of Mount Everest from 1922 through 2004, and 186 climbers have died on the mountain, reports Everesthistory.com.

"Christopher is bringing his body back by plane from Katmandu. He probably won't be back before Thursday or Friday," Dr. O'Brien said.

Mike O'Brien, who grew up in Oswego, lived in Seattle and worked as a catering manager for the Seattle Mariners. He also worked as a guide on river rafting trips in the Seattle area.

"He was a very avid sportsman with a wonderful sense of humor and a dedication to living life to the fullest," Caltabiano said.

Chris O'Brien, of Haddonfield, N.J., is a medical student at Jefferson University in Philadelphia, where he expects to graduate this year with a Ph.D. and medical degree.

The HereditaryDisease Foundation funds research seeking cures for diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's.

Mike's mother, Alice Jean O'Brien, a registered nurse, was 59 when Huntington's disease killed her in 1996.

His sister, Diane O'Brien Barry, was an All-American collegiate swimmer, a wife and mother. She was 39, in the early stages of Huntington's, when she was killed by a fall at her home in 1999.