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Treacherous mountain ascents like Everest have long been mythologized by men. But this week, Lale chats with two women who are achieving extraordinary feats at high altitudes: Jen Peedom, an award-winning Australian film director, who makes documentaries about mountaineering, and Sasha DiGiulian, a professional rock climber who went from winning indoor competitions to going on treacherous outdoor climbs. DiGiulian has accomplished 28 First Female Ascents around the world, including a First Female Ascent on the North Face of the Eiger, the highest wall of the Alps.
Lale Arikoglu: Hello, I'm Lale Arikoglu and welcome to another episode of Women Who Travel. Today, I'm talking to two outdoors people about their relationship with nature, physical challenges, and their search for adventure. They're women who climb and tackle a sense that were long the preserve of men.
Jen Peedom is an Australian film director who makes documentaries about mountaineering. And relatively early on in her career, she chose to make a film about Mount Everest.
Jen Peedom: I was the only woman. There were very few women climbing on Everest expeditions at that point. Maybe there would be one in an expedition of 20 or 30 people. I think on that first one, I was the only woman.
LA: And Sasha DiGiulian, a professional rock climber who went from winning indoor competitions all over the world, to going on treacherous outdoor climbs that even require her to camp out on cliff faces. And full disclosure, she's also engaged to my good friend.
Sasha DiGiulian: Something that motivates me as a professional climber is going after these, kind of like benchmark achievements within my sport and seeing if I could be the first human or the first woman to accomplish something that is physically very challenging. I love visiting new countries. My career at this point has taken me to over 50 different countries around the world. And I love learning about just like, new places to visit through the expeditions that take me there.
LA: But first, how Jen Peedom stumbled into adventure filmmaking.
JP: I grew up in, in Canberra, in Australia, so, um, the capital. It's a sort of relatively small town surrounded by a lot of nature. And my parents took us out to, you know, all of our holidays were camping and trekking and, and all of that kind of thing. So, I sort of learned, I guess, to love the, uh, outdoors. I was the youngest of three kids, so I was always the smallest. By the time I was about six, we were out and, um, back, back on camping overnight, cross country skiing up mountains.
And I think, um, there were probably times where I found it really difficult, but somehow learned that beautiful lesson that's so hard to learn unless you're thrown into an experience like that, which is that you get stronger from doing that. You, you think you can't, and then you do it anyway and you've got the choice, so you have to go and you do it.
Later, when I finished high school, I went off and I lived in like America for a year, and I traveled a lot through Latin America. I also traveled through Southeast Asia. And again, I think I was always looking for those experiences to challenge myself. And within those, there were adventures and those were the days before mobile phones. And so, we were taking different kinds of risks. Um, I was traveling sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.
A little bit later, I was living in Sydney near Bondi Beach with a bunch of, um, New Zealanders actually. And I had learned to operate a camera at this point. Um, and I was sort of not yet successful, but aspiring, let's say, documentary filmmaker and these guys used to film adventure races. So I, I got asked to be on the crew as one of the adventure racers, if you'd like. And it was that that introduced me to more filming in the natural world.
LA: I'm gonna sound like a total novice, but what do you mean by adventure races?
JP: They're these, kind of epic outdoor adventures, uh, and often they're team things. They go from sort of team building activities in the corporate world to professional adventure races where people are doing these, you know, uh, 100 kilometer runs and kayaking and cycling and rock climbing. And so, in order to be able to film these things, you needed to be f- pretty fit
and you needed to be able to kind of do all of the things that those guys were doing. So, I had to sort of learn to keep up. But it was, it was those experiences and meeting that camera crew, you know, most New Zealanders you meet in the world, they're adventurous, outdoorsy people, at least in my experience.
LA: I was gonna say that and then I was like, no, I'm like completely stereotyping an entire country. [laughs] But it's true, right?
JP: Yeah, it's true. And they're such wonderful people. And I think they do inherently have a love of, of landscape and the outdoors. I've really noticed that with my films actually traveling over there to their film festivals and they just seem to appreciate them in a really different way.
All of those Kiwis, as I call them, um, that a number of them were also mountaineers. And so, then it was that next step that took me to the mountains and they're like, "Why don't you come and try doing some camera operating in the mountains?" And so, that led me to Nepal. I was looking for a way into, you know, to get my foot in the door on documentaries to get myself credits. Um, and I was a reasonable camera operator. What I didn't know was that I happened to have a, a body that turned out it worked quite well with altitude.
And so, I then started to get offered these camera operating gigs. And so, it was kind of like that, it just sort of happened by chance that I ended up working in the Himalayas. And you know, there kind of is no more epic environment than, than the Himalayas. So, so that's sort of how my filmmaking career and my filmmaking, I guess, began in the Himalayas. And that then led me to Everest actually, camera operating on Everest expeditions.
LA: Everest and the Himalayas are obviously so, at least to me, I feel like in a lot of pop culture and in, you know, in various forms of writing and documenting, it can be quite romanticized. What did it feel like as you were discovering that you worked well in altitude and you were in this completely like, foreign wilderness, um, that most people don't get to see, and you sort of stumbled into it slightly? What was it like to absorb it all?
JP: The first time I landed up in this a- airport on this village called Lukla, which is where the, the, the planes land to the gateway of the Everest region, and got off the plane and had the backpack on, I was incredibly excited. And I was flooded with this sense of, I feel like I've been here before. I mean, you talk about the romanticism, maybe it was that. Don't know what it was, but it was this very strong feeling that I was supposed to be there. And that this is, I kind of had a connection to this place.
What it makes you feel being in that environment is it puts everything in perspective. It makes you feel small. It makes you feel humbled. And I really liked that feeling.
LA: More from Jen after the break.
The Sherpa community of Nepal has been an intrinsic part of the expedition groups that ascend Everest. Guiding elite mountaineers as they strive to meet the summit and taking huge risks to their own lives to ensure the safety of others. Jen's documentary work pays homage to the Sherpa expertise and bravery.
JP: I tried to make the heroes of the Sherpas as much as I possibly could because there was some extraordinary heroics by Sherpas. And very sadly, most of that got left on the cutting room floor in the, in the ultimate show, which I didn't have editorial control over. I was so frustrated by that typical narrative that these guys go up there and they climb Everest seemingly without any help. When in fact, you know, every tent has been put up by somebody else. The sleeping bag is being carried by somebody else, the food, the, the oxygen bottles, the ropes. Um, and I wanted to, to show how it really worked on the Everest exhibition. So, that was motivation behind that.
LA: That film, which came out in 2015, is a portrait of the Sherpa community as you just described. And a community that was impacted by a devastating avalanche on Everest, which there were, I think it was 16 lives lost, all of whom are Sherpas. Why do you think that people want to kind of look the other way when it comes to both the heroic acts and the sort of sacrifice and suffering of Sherpas and the Sherpa community on Everest? Why, why is that story still so hard to get told?
JP: I mean, I think put simply, you know, to climb Everest is, is a big deal. It takes time and training and money and all of these things. And I think when people have made the decision that they wanna do that, they don't really want anything to get in their way. And you know, I can understand that to some extent, but I think for me why that struck such a difficult chord was that comes back to what I said earlier about the environment and the way that it made me feel. And for me it always, the people in that landscape, but also the landscape itself, uh, forces you to be humble. Well, at least that's the impact it had on me.
I think base camp is a totally different scenario. You have all of these people there and it's competitive, you know. Everybody knows there's traffic jams on Everest now, you know. Everyone wants to get up there first and avoid the crowds and all of this kind of stuff. And so, there is just this kind of bubble that exists within that world that isn't of that world, um, but it's so at odds with the world. And it's so at odds with those ideas of humility and compassion. And what I saw at base camp that year was a, a real lack of humility and compassion. Um, and often there would be some feigned kind of, "We're doing it to honor the Sherpas." [laugh] And the Sherpas are like, Uh-uh. That's, that's no way to honor us."
LA: A lot of when you were filming was moments with Sherpas. There were kind of away from the sort of climbers who had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to come and do this thing, and like, the sort of unseen or unspoken moments that were happening. Tell me a little bit more about that. Like, evenings that have like, really just stayed in your head and when you think of Everest, make you miss Everest and miss the communities that live there.
JP: Most of those special moments were away from base camp to be totally honest with you. But the, the moments at base camp that I, I do remember is, you know, in, in, because even today the sheers have their own dining tents and the foreigners have theirs. It's kind of like 1953, it's kind of really quite strange. But I would spend a lot of time in the Sherpa's tents and they would always be playing cards and, and laughing. And there would be people cooking and there was this real sense of community, which is what is very much part of Sherpa and their Buddhist culture, is, is that they all serve community and, and others rather than themselves as an individual. So, there's a totally different vibe going on in the Sherpa quarters.
There was a main character in, a Sherpa called Phurba Tashi, and I then really got to know him very well and his family. And so, a couple of years later I went back there with my young family and my kids were about six and eight at the time. And we went and, 'cause he'd had a baby and he wanted me to meet the baby. And he'd had a very difficult time following the bad Everest expedition [inaudible 00:12:37] uh, the avalanche happened. And so, it was a beautiful experience just to, to go there with my little kids, for them to spend time with his kids. And, and just spend time, and just be there without any Everest expedition going on. That was my, probably one of my best holidays ever, I would say.
LA: Jen's award-winning film Sherpa in 2015 led to another documentary Mountain, and then River. And she continues to make epic, but compassionate films about nature. After the break, world-class professional climber Sasha DiGiulian who has climbed over 30 first female ascents and she somehow manages to make it sound easy.
Sasha DiGiulian is known for climbing some of the hardest rock walls in a professional sport that's traditionally been dominated by men. Her sport requires full body strength and is often about challenging one's own fear.
SD: I've been climbing for coming up on 25 years. And it is a very male-dominated sport, but as climbing grows, so does the female contingency. When I see another woman do something that's incredibly inspiring, I feel like, "Oh, wow, I can do that because she did that." And sometimes I think that that like, even just biological difference of like, seeing a male achieve something will not necessarily inspire the same amount of confidence within me to feel like it's a relatable, achievable goal.
LA: Sasha uses her platform to encourage more women to see a place for themselves in climbing and in sports in general. And when it comes to her own career, she started it off in a climbing gym.
SD: My family didn't even know what climbing was. I got into it because my brother had a birthday party at a climbing gym when I was six in Alexandria, Virginia, and I joined their junior team program. That was kind of the way that I grew up with the sport, was starting to compete in rock climbing. At seven years old, I literally stumbled upon a youth regional championship. When I was seven, I won my category of 11 and under. And granted back in the late '90s, like climbing competitions did not have the same participation as they do today. And it's been really incredible to see over the last two decades just that expansion of the sport.
My trajectory has been starting in climbing for the junior national team winning, then the adult national championships, Pan American Championships, World Championships and kind of getting my credibility through the competition landscape. And then transitioning my career to really focus on outdoor climbing, and then into this current chapter of my career, which is like, Big Wolf and first female ascent expeditions around the world.
LA: So, you were starting on climbing walls and given you were teeny, teeny tiny when you started it, what was it like to transition to the outdoors? Did it feel scarier? Did you feel like you had less control? I, I imagine it must have been quite overwhelming to kind of suddenly just be relying on nature in a way you weren't when you were starting out.
SD: Totally. And I think that there's this huge bridge that, um, continues to need to be built with a stronger foundation of gym to outdoors because over 80% of climbers who climb inside actually don't climb outside. For me, I was pretty lucky to have this community that I grew up with within my climbing gym team program of basically like, a ragtag crew of kids from the DC Metro area that were like all into climbing. And we'd go to the um, New River Gorge and Franklin to go climbing. So, it was a pretty organized weekend camping adventure that I would go on.
But then by the time I was 16, I was traveling to Europe on my own with friends and going climbing outside. And there definitely was like, a transition period before my first expedition when I was in my early 20s to the Dolomites in Italy that was like, okay, we're gonna be exposed and in the elements for a very long period of time. And that adjustment is really intimidating because all of a sudden you realize that that super controlled atmosphere that existed within the competition sphere that I was so used to for the first like, decade and a half of my career, was suddenly like, kind of losing its foundation. I needed to rebuild a new foundation.
LA: I mean, clearly you must have liked it 'cause you kept going with it. What was that Dolomites trip like?
SD: Oh, gosh. Well, so I had been at a dinner with Reinhold Messner and he is really like, this incredibly accomplished mountaineer, and he flipped over this wine menu and he was like, "Sasha, you have to go and do this." And he was kind of mentoring me and what a really cutting edge next step for my career would be to take my skills from high-end sport climbing, which is single pitch climbing to then into more of like, an adventure scope.
LA: Wait, what's single pitch?
SD: Single pitch is generally considered like a rope length and you climb with a 60 to 80 meter rope. And you climb, maybe it's like 40 feet, maybe it's 100 feet, but then you lower back down to the ground. And what Reinhold was suggesting I do was a multi-pitch where you're climbing multiple pitches stacked on top of each other. You can be on the wall from anywhere, it's like eight hours to a week sleeping on the wall with what's called a portaledge, where you, it's basically like a little hammock that you pitch on the side of the cliff.
LA: Sasha, you just dropped in so casually that you're like, yeah, [laughs] I know you said like 8 hours to like 24. And I was like, that's insane. A whole week?
SD: Yes, because you're sleeping, you're resting, you're trying to put together, like say, this 3000 foot climb and it's really challenging. In the Dolomites, that's a lot of the climbs there, are these like, hikes into these beautiful limestone cliff faces that are typically multiple pitches stacked on top of each other. So, that was my first kind of exposure to a big wall, was to go and try and accomplish the hardest big wall achieved by a woman. I had no experience in this terrain of climbing. I also was new to understanding the role in which weather patterns and changing climate can play on the terrain that you're climbing itself.
When I go on a trip that's for a climbing purpose, I am planning an expedition where we're gonna be like, pitching our tents and living within the dirt and with the local communities, and interacting with that like, entire population that does just like, live in this remote region.
LA: What have been some of your most like, memorable encounters when you've been getting to know all these people that live in essentially kind of the middle of nowhere, right?
SD: Totally. When I was 18, one of the more memorable moments in my travels during that phase of my life, we traveled to Getu Valley, which is in the Guizhou Province. And I remember we hiked up about like, two hours to find this local population of people living basically on the top of a mountain, cultivating their own crops and livestock and everything like that. And it was really mind-blowing to me as kind of a, a young traveler before I had been to like, Shanghai and Beijing and different places within China that are really bustling cities, and then stepping out into such a remote beautiful landscape where we're walking across like, rice paddies. And there's like, the like, humidity and like, just like, thickness of the air, but it's also like, fresh and alive and lush, was really incredible. And being welcomed into people's homes and being offered meals was amazing.
LA: I have to ask what you ate. Do you remember?
SD: Oh, man, a lot. In, in this region was a lot of rice-based dishes with like, greens and squash and, um, different like, broths that would mix together. And I was with a company called Petzl, which has a large French contingency of athletes. And like, I remember us, as Americans will be like, would add spice, which is this really like, delicious chili paste that they had. And like, the whole French contingency of our trip like, avoided the spice. Um, but lots of like, different spices.
LA: [laughs] I love that. That's an amazing detail.
SD: Yeah, yeah. Um, I feel like French, um, in general, I don't wanna classify everyone, aren't as keen on spice as, um, Americans.
LA: [laughs] I know, Americans I feel like get a bad rap for like, spicy food, but I feel like Americans put hot sauce on basically everything.
SD: Yeah. I mean, we have Tex-Mex and we're, we spice things up a little bit. [laughs] This last fall, I led an expedition to this region called Picos de Europa, which is in, um, northwest region of Spain. It's an area that I had never been to, but part of what kind of spurred the motivation around the expedition was I knew the three men that had put up the first ascent of this very challenging climb. But then, it kind of spurred into building a female team and building all of the logistics of like, how we would get there and where we would camp.
LA: Climbing one of the hardest ascents in the world is an incredible achievement. It is almost 2,000 feet up a route called Rayu, and they were the first group of women to ever complete it.
SD: We ended up delaying that expedition actually six weeks due to the extreme heat wave that was passing through Western Europe last year. So, as a professional climber, I also feel very in touch with what changes are happening across the environment, and the ways in which changing weather patterns can have a really drastic effect. Um, all of the effects of the extreme heat and drought and changing levels of the integrity of the snowpack and loosening rock is something that I've noticed a lot is like, the extreme swings in weather can also affect the way in which rockfall is more increasing.
There's kind of a multitude of different ways in which climate change is negatively impacting outdoor travel and ecotourism and I guess outdoor adventure travel. It's tough because I think that we are witnessing climate change firsthand and it's a global issue.
LA: I have loved getting to know you from afar by seeing you climb on Instagram and climb on the internet. And if people want to follow along with you and get to know you better and maybe get inspired to find a local climbing wall or go outdoors themselves, um, where can they find you?
SD: Yeah. You can find me @sashadigiulian, it's just my handle across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok. And local climbing gyms, I would say that, that they have great resources for finding ways in which you can get linked with an outfitter guide or, um, the community members that will help you bridge that gap from indoor to outdoor.
LA: Ah, fabulous. This was so great.
For the next few weeks, we are taking a break from our usual episodes to do some traveling and take advantage of the August weather, but we are not totally gone. Instead, I'll be checking in with listeners about their memorable travel stories. So, keep an eye on your feed for brand new dispatchers from around the world.
I'm Lale Arikoglu and you can find me on Instagram @lalehannah. Our engineers are Jake Lummus and Gabe Quiroga. The show is mixed by Amar Lal. Jude Kampfner from Corporation for Independent Media is our producer. See you next week.