How Allie Pepper, a world class mountaineer coped when menopause threatened to end her climbing career

[00:10] Sonya: Today you're going to meet Ellie Pepper. Ellie is an incredible woman, but be warned, she's unbelievably humble and talks down her successes and achievements considerably. So I'm going to let you get to know her, but please know she has achieved things in this world that very few people have. Now, two years ago, at the age of 45, ellie found that menopause literally set her down on her ass and she thought that her mountaineering career was over. She'll share with you the journey that she went on to find a solution to the horrendous symptoms that she was struggling with and how finding the right GP and the right therapy for her has set her up on an incredible project that she will share all about in this episode. Enjoy meeting allie pepper. Welcome to dear menopause.

[01:20] Allie: Thank you. It's so good to be here with you.

[01:25] Sonya: I want to make sure that everybody that's listening really appreciates the fact that we are sitting here recording this via the amazing technology that we have available to us. I'm in Sydney, you are in Kathmandu, Nepal, about to head off on an incredible adventure. And you've squeezed me into a window of time before you leave tomorrow. So I'm super grateful for that. Ali, why don't we start off, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and these incredible things that you get up to.

[01:55] Allie: Yeah, so I am a professional mountaineer now, you could say. I've been climbing mountains for 23 years now. And, yeah, apart from the climbing myself, I've also been a guide. So I started climbing and guiding at the same time in 1999. And I have my own guiding business, but I'm moving more into corporate speaking and public speaking from what I've read.

[02:31] Sonya: When you say that you started your guiding company and your mountaineering career together at the same time, that was kind of off the back of a course that you did, like, years ago, wasn't it?

[02:42] Allie: Yeah, exactly. So I had traveled around, like, India and Nepal on a spiritual journey when I was 23, 22, just looking for myself. I hadn't had, like, a career when I finished school, actually failed my HSC back in the day. And, yeah, I didn't have, like, a career. I was just traveling around, fruit picking, casual jobs, wanting to be faster than the boys kind of thing. I like to be outside. Yeah. So when I came back from India and Nepal, I thought it was time to start a career. And I went to my local TAFE college. I looked at all of the brochures and I read one wrong because I was a hippie. And it said to me, outdoor recreation. And I was like, wow, that sounds like a great course because I love the outdoors and I want to recreate myself. And so I joined that course. I grew up in the blue mountains, like Australia's largest climbing area, but I never had been climbing before. I didn't have that opportunity in high school, like, going to Katumba Heights, like literally on the edge of the cliff. And I didn't even know that that world existed until that course. Basically, I just loved it. I loved everything.

[04:13] Sonya: So I'm going to assume that that course was not about recreating. It was recreation.

[04:19] Allie: It was recreation and it led into outdoor leadership. The first course I did was just, I guess, participating in all of these types of things like climbing absailing, canyoning and bushwalking. And then I moved up the next level to leading all of those activities. And yeah, so I enjoyed both things as much, the doing and the guiding, because the guiding gave me a sense of self worth. And I had quite a low self esteem at the time, especially seeing as I didn't have a career or any real passion or drive or anything that I was motivated about. And yeah, so actually looking after people made me feel really good about myself.

[05:20] Sonya: And it's quite a skill. Leadership is a skill within itself, but leading tours and groups of other people, you know, really is a skill. You, you are, you are dealing with different personality types, you're dealing with different levels of ability. You're having to motivate people and inspire people to keep them going. People are relying on you. That's a pretty big skill to obviously inherently for you have you're obviously just a natural leader.

[05:51] Allie: Yeah, I didn't even know and it was like a process of discovery and a very empowering course. Like, I have taught that course up until last year and just have so many people from different backgrounds and different ages and everything come into that course and see them grow as a person. Because of course, when you learn leadership, you learn all of those things. There's so much to it. It really is yourself as well, of course, like, your strengths, your weaknesses, how to communicate, like dealing with conflict, trying to keep positive and encouraging people and creating a safe learning environment. And all of these things are like really essential life skills, right?

[06:52] Sonya: Yeah, they are, but they don't come naturally to so many people. And obviously what I'm getting a sense of here is that the universe really handed you this opportunity of making a little bit of an error in the reading of the title of the course to going embracing that anyway and going, okay, well, I'm here now, let's go, let's see what this has to offer. And then that whole 360 journey that you've been on to then go on to become the teacher of that course, I think yes, that within itself is so incredibly empowering and so it's such a powerful story. So tell me then how that all led you to mountaineering, which is an incredibly different beast for anyone that is listening and doesn't know. Can you explain what mountaineering actually is?

[07:45] Allie: Yeah, so mountaineering is a huge world because there's so many aspects to mountaineering and there's so many specialties to mountaineering, because it does include rock climbing, it does include hiking at altitude. It does include just hiking, but up mountains, it can include ice climbing, it can include technical climbing with rock and ice and snow. But essentially, it's the art of being in the mountains. And maybe sometimes you summit, maybe sometimes you don't. Down on top of a mountain? Yeah. And you can just mountaineer by doing a course where maybe you don't summit any mountains, but you learn mountaineering skills. So there's a lot to mountaineering, and it's an endless, I guess, category of different types of specializations.

[09:01] Sonya: Cool. But you have taken mountaineering to its absolute limits, haven't you?

[09:08] Allie: I have dabbled.

[09:12] Sonya: Oh, come on. You're talking yourself down now. Let's be honest. You have more than dabbled.

[09:18] Allie: Some harder types of mountaineering 

[09:24] Sonya: pottered your way to summit Everest. Come on.

[09:28] Allie:  I did get addicted to thin air. And what I realized actually, in 2000 when I ended up working on an expedition on Afancargua, the highest mountain in the Americas, I realized I had a perhaps genetic talent at high altitude, where I didn't just feel strong myself, but I was actually able to look after other people. That's when I realized, like, oh, wow. I don't think this is kind of a normal thing. When people first go to high altitude, they don't always go so good.

[10:19] Sonya: No, high altitude definitely does not agree with everyone. I've been on a trip where I've seen people get incredibly ill from being at altitude and have to be taken down so that they can recover as they head back down the mountain. So it is quite a gift, I guess, to know that you have that ability to do really well at altitude and in that thin air, as you know, you don't unless you test it, you just don't know.

[10:49] Allie: That's right. Again, I just had that opportunity to work on an Australian School of Mountaineering expedition. My friends that were guiding there said to me if I sold enough places on this trip that I could go. And I did. I didn't even know the mountain, but I sold eleven places.

[11:11] Sonya: So there's a salesperson in there as well.

[11:14] Allie: Yeah, there's that's right. I can talk someone into an adventure pretty easily. Yeah. So that's when I discovered, I guess, that high altitude passion. But I did discover my mountaineering passion earlier than that. So the year prior to then, I had done a technical mountaineering course in New Zealand, and that's when I really changed my life. I think I fell in love with mountains.

[11:50] Sonya: Where has that taken you since? You have summited a number of mountains already. So do you want to give us a quick number of what kind of and the other thing that you seem to do, and I know that this project that you're on now, which we're about to talk about in a minute. You do as you've already explained, you climb a lot of the time without additional oxygen as well, don't you?

[12:14] Allie: Yeah. So on the eight thousanders, the first 8000 er I did was show you in 2007. I had spent a lot of time climbing in the Andes before then and I'd already guided Akin cargo at that point at a guess like nine times maybe. And I'd spent a lot of time, like maybe nine months climbing in Peru. So Peru is not as high as Akon cargo almost, but all 6000 meters and a lot more technical. And I just got to the point where I was feeling very confident and comfortable climbing there and I realized I was ready for the Himalaya. And I just really had this dream to climb an 8000 meters peak and I hadn't even considered using oxygen, to be honest. I guess the easiest way to explain it is that climbers at the time weren't using oxygen. Yeah, it was just normal, I think, as a climber, to not even really consider it. I think if you're guiding, then it made sense because of course it makes it a lot safer for the clients and it's safer for the guides and all that kind of thing. So when I went to Cho, I went with a climbing partner from Australia, just again, hadn't considered even using oxygen, didn't even have any spare oxygen for emergency, nothing. Didn't even have a sat phone, actually, or a GPS, no access to weather. And he ended up getting frost nip on eight of his toes and he wasn't able to go for the summit push. So I actually went alone for eight days. And when I went to the summit.

[14:11] Sonya: I know sherpa with you at all on that climb. So you were literally solo by myself.

[14:18] Allie: I had some people along the way, like I shared the tent with them, things like that. On the summit day, I was completely alone. Completely alone. No one else went up. It was another world, to be honest, and something I really only dreamed about for a long time. And when I got to the summit, it was pretty unbelievable. I don't know how to describe it.

[14:48] Sonya: I can't imagine that you would be able to describe it in a way where people would understand, because I can imagine there must be A, this sense of magic of what you've just done, but B, also fear and exhaustion and I suppose you've also got to think to get yourself back down as well. So it's not like you can just sit at the top and go party, let's go. It's like, okay, I'm here, but now I've got to get myself down safely as well.

[15:19] Allie: It's very difficult to celebrate on an 8000 meters summit, really, because it's kind of only halfway like most of the accidents that happen are when people are going down. I don't really celebrate until I get to the base camp, essentially.

[15:34] Sonya: That sounds like a very safe and sensible thing to do.

[15:37] Allie: Yeah. You have to stay focused until then, and sometimes you don't sleep for quite a few days.

[15:42] Sonya: Mountaineering has become your career. You have your own business that's related. It's not just a passion project for you. You've got a business wrapped up in this. It is also your purpose and your big driver in life that brings you joy, obviously. Tell me then how menopause started to play a part in this.

[16:04] Allie: Yeah, well, I was actually on the contraceptive pill in the middle of COVID I stopped taking it two weeks later. I was hit by a freight train of symptoms that I just had no idea what was going on.

[16:31] Sonya: And how old were you?

[16:33] Allie: I was 45. And I don't even know how long I had been in periment menopause for, because the contraceptive pill was masking the symptoms, essentially, and yeah, so I just couldn't sleep at night. Waking up like, five times in the night, dripping in sweat, all my joints were aching. I do a lot of training and I wasn't able to recover for days after training. If I sat down on the ground like it was like an old woman trying to stand up again, I would like a sniff, a cucumber and put fat on rain, fog. What am I doing here in this room? I know I came here to do something, but I have absolutely no idea what it is.

[17:37] Sonya: Was all of that really confronting for you?

[17:41] Allie: Yeah, because I just thought, there's no way I can continue mountaineering with this. I can't imagine how I would climb an 8000 meters mountain with hot flashes and brain fog and aching joints and not being able to recover physically fast enough. I literally just thought, this is the end of my career, really? In terms of doing such a high level sport of climbing without oxygen on 8000. It's another level to be thinking, wow, I spent, like, 20 years getting all of this experience and built up and now I can't do what I want to do.

[18:50] Sonya: Yeah. It's like you woke up one morning and someone had just taken it all away from you.

[18:55] Allie: Yeah, exactly. What now? I was also going through not a good time in my marriage. My marriage has ended as well, so I'm divorced now. So everything together, I mean, I think you can imagine you have depression and you don't even really know that you have depression because it just creeps up on you. Yeah. So it was like everything at once, let's face it.

[19:27] Sonya: And during COVID And during COVID Yeah. Wow. Allie. That's a lot.

[19:33] Allie: Yes, it was a lot.

[19:35] Sonya: So what did you do in regards to the menopause and your day to day symptoms that you were struggling with? Where did you reach out for help? What sort of help did you get? Talk us through that side of things.

[19:48] Allie: Yeah. So I went to just the doctor. The doctor prescribed me some things, which I would say like tablets, which didn't really do a lot. It stopped the really bad hot flashes in the night, but it didn't help with the other symptoms. Yeah, okay, it helped a bit, but I'm not going to say a dramatic effect. And it probably took me a few months of then I saw another doctor and thankfully she had read something like a newsletter, had talked about welfare. She had said to me, like, oh, I found out about these doctors that know more about menopause.

[20:42] Sonya: Yeah. And just for anyone that's listening, well, Fem is the online private practice that's been set up by Dr. Kelly Tegel. I've got an interview with Kelly Gosh months ago. We did an interview with Kelly talking about welfare. So I'll link through to that in the show notes for anyone that's listening. But how lucky that you came across a GP that was familiar with welfare and the work that they're doing. So is that where your kind of next course of action was? Did you go down the path with them?

[21:09] Allie: He actually didn't have any answer. The GP just said, I've heard of this and maybe you should try it. Right. So thankfully that was great. Like, great. And once I talked to the doctor there, and she was really interested in me and not just my symptoms, but also my lifestyle and what I do, like, everything. And she was able to prescribe an HRT, like a transdermal oestrogen and Progesterone. So I guess it took about a month before I realized, like, oh, I'm feeling, like, a lot better. Then I would say a year, and I completely have my life back. But not only that, my body feels the same as it did ten years ago.

[22:14] Sonya: Wow, that's huge.

[22:16] Allie: But the thing is, I know this because I'm very in tune with my body. I'm doing exercise six days a week. I climb, I run, I have a certain healthy diet. I track my sleep. For me, I know the difference. Right. But even still, all of these things had crept up on me. I think everybody notices maybe around 40, maybe, that we're not the same body anymore in terms of it's harder to eat like you used to. You have to think a lot more about the food that you put in your body. You have to think a lot about exercise. We can't live like we were in our 20s, where we just eat whatever and move whenever. Yeah, that's right, exactly. It becomes like you need to have more of a routine, I guess, to maintain it.

[23:36] Sonya: And it's a little bit more strategic, I think, as well, with, like you said yes. There has to be strategy around exercise, for sure. And if you are finding that you're a woman whose body shape is changing and you found yourself in a cycle where the weight is being gained, and that's something you're not comfortable with, then you do need a strategy around nutrition and sleep and exercise and bringing them all together. Yeah. It's so important. You've been on the HRT now for a couple of years.

[24:09] Allie: It's over a year. It's like a year.

[24:11] Sonya: Okay, cool.

[24:12] Allie: Four months. Something like that. Yeah.

[24:16] Sonya: And you're about to embark on a really big project. So obviously you are feeling where you had those feelings of, I'm never going to be able to climb mountaineer again. My career is over. You've obviously well past that.

[24:28] Allie: I'm well past that. I had a very structured training regime, should we say, before coming to Nepal, I started lifting more heavy stuff, like with an Olympic barbell.

[24:45] Sonya: Good.

[24:46] Allie: And it's just an absolute game changer. And I would suggest lifting heavy stuff, all women in menopause, because it's the best way to gain muscle in terms of your bone density and all this kind of stuff. Like, it's proven changing.

[25:13] Sonya: And for mental health as well. Mental health, self confidence, body image, the relationship that you have with your body changes. Lifting heavy stuff is the bomb.

[25:24] Allie: It is. And to have more muscle, more muscle burns, more fat, you can eat more.

[25:33] Sonya: And it's also good for balance. It's great for reduction of falls when you're older and balance and things can become a problem. Yeah. And I have done podcasts just on the benefits of strength training, but that's really interesting that for you, as someone who, as you said, you were a runner, and you've probably been a little bit more cardio based with your training for altitude. There's a lot of kind of interval training involved in preparing your body for that. To hear that you have embraced strength training now and is brilliant. Yeah, that's fantastic. All right, so I want to segue into you telling us about your 14 Peaks project, because this is huge.

[26:16] Allie: Yeah. So the project itself is to climb all 14 of the world's 8000 meters peaks without the use of additional oxygen to the true summits in the world's fastest time. And there's quite a lot to the story, because when I say true summits, there's a lot behind that. Basically, over like, four years, there were a small team that went through all the data of all the people that claimed to have climbed the 14 peaks or had claimed quite a few, including me, and to verify whether they had actually made the true summit. Yeah. So some of the mountains where there's, like, a ridge with lots of little high points are difficult to know without a GPS where the actual true summit is. Some of these mountains, for example, Reinhold Messner, he was the first Alpinist to complete all 14 8000 meters peaks without additional oxygen. And not only I mean, he was phenomenal. Like, he put up very difficult routes soloing, but he didn't actually make the true summit of Annapurna. He wouldn't have known. No way to know. He just went to the highest point when he exited a gully. It just wasn't the True summit. So not even Reinhold Messner had the 14 peak, so actually only three men. So three people, but three men has all 14 peaks to the True summits. One of them has this with oxygen, other two have, like, without. And the faster of the two of those guys, ed Visas and Vika Gustavson, took 16 years. There's a big but back in the day when they did that, they didn't have the logistics and all the things that we have these days. So they were just doing their thing. Right. A lot of the time they were climbing together alone. They didn't have helicopters, but they were using the latest technology and equipment and ways climbing that they had available. But now with advancements, I would say in the climbing, it's just a different world.

[29:03] Sonya: So your time period to do this.

[29:05] Allie: Is just over two years.

[29:08] Sonya: So you're pretty much kind of basically planning to be away until right now.

[29:13] Allie: I'm away for five months.

[29:14] Sonya: Five months. Okay.

[29:16] Allie: Then I come back for a few weeks and then I come back to Nepal again. But basically from November until mid March, I'm in Australia.

[29:26] Sonya: Yeah. Because of the summer, there's nothing happening then.

[29:30] Allie: Yeah, exactly. Like, it's sort of season. I mean, there is like people can do a sense during that time. It's a lot more difficult, though.

[29:40] Sonya: Yeah, of course. Okay, so this is really incredible. So we're literally just going to have to follow along. And I will link through to your Instagram account. I'll have the links through to your website so that everybody that's just as fascinated by what you're doing as I am can follow along and keep track with where you are and what you've achieved and kind of tick those mountains off as you go.

[30:06] Allie: Yeah, so exactly. So basically, I will mostly be posting on Instagram and my Instagram's Alley Pepper Adventures. And also while I climb, I have a Garmin inreach, so possible to click on my link tree on my Instagram and follow my Garmin tracker. And JetBlue can even message me, so I do get messages like, good luck on the summer attempt and things like that, which is pretty awesome.

[30:36] Sonya: Yeah, cool. All right, well, I will definitely be doing that, and I'm pretty sure that there'll be lots of women listening to that are just as fascinated by what you're up to. Ellie, I have enjoyed chatting with you so much, and one of the reasons that I really was so excited to get this opportunity to talk to you before you left was I just feel that your story of if we just take it from your menopause. When you were hit by that freight train and menopause really kind of kicked you up the arse big time, and you literally thought everything was from a career perspective was over. And these dreams that you obviously still had were taken away from you to persevering with finding a GP or a practitioner that was able to work with you, that listened to you. I'm going to assume that they realized how important it was for you to feel good, to be able to live your life on your terms, the way that you wanted to live your life, and they worked with you to find a solution to that, to have you tomorrow embarking on this incredible adventure. I just find such an inspiring story for women that perhaps are in that little rabbit hole of despair with menopause right now.

[31:50] Allie: Yeah, that's right, your old self back, but better. I know I have all of the experience from all of my years already on the planet and now I'm taking all of that experience, plus a healthy, strong body, into the next half of my life, literally, because I think we'll be living to 100.

[32:17] Sonya: Absolutely. Yeah. It's totally a halfway point.

[32:20] Allie: It's not the end of the world. It is time to just stop and think like, well, what do I want to achieve now? It's not the end. And I say, like, menopause to menopigs, because for me, I'm doing the hardest project of my life and my climbing career now.

[32:44] Sonya: And I guarantee you're going to kick its ass.

[32:47] Allie: Yes. Excellent.

[32:51] Sonya: Okay, that's a really good note to finish up on, Ellie. I wrap up all of my interviews by asking my guests one question, and that is, if you have time, what have you been listening to, watching or reading recently that has brought you joy?

[33:06] Allie: I would have to say that if I have a spare moment, it would be gaia. It's a streaming platform. Think like Netflix accepts all about spiritual.

[33:22] Sonya: Growth and that's a streaming platform?

[33:24] Allie: Yes, that's a streaming platform. And I watched a lot of documentaries series about mindset expanding consciousness. Yeah, that's kind of my pastime.

[33:39] Sonya: Well, you say it's your pastime, but actually I saw your story on your Instagram this morning where you talked about and it really resonated so much with me, where mindset dictates so much of our success. I think you talked about you could have done all of the training and hit all of the notes with your nutrition and have chosen the right window with the weather to go and climb your mountain, but if your mindset isn't right, you're not going to achieve that.

[34:07] Allie: I might as well stay in bed. It really is like the key. Everything behind the project is to have a strong mindset and mental fortitude, which is something that you have to work on. It's not something that you can ignore in your life, I don't think, and achieve big things. So I have spent, I guess, lately I have a coach in terms of, like he would say life coach, but transformational coach is probably more the real deal because everybody has these negative self beliefs, we have, like, 80,000 thoughts a day. And out of those 80,000 thoughts, how many are negative or how many are they consciously, subconsciously saying things in our brain that we don't even realize sometimes until we step back and look at our thoughts. Like, I'm not choosing to do this thing that I love doing because I don't believe I'm good enough. Why? Right.

[35:22] Sonya: It's a form of self sabotage, isn't it?

[35:25] Allie: Yeah, exactly. But we do it all the time. Like, oh, no, I'm not going to do this because I don't think I've never done that before. So I don't think I want to go outside my comfort zone to do something that I think would be really amazing, but I don't want to because I'm afraid or whatever it is. Yeah. And even I, of course, I could try to convince myself, like, oh, I've had 23 years of climbing experience. Everybody thinks I'm amazing. My friends are like, oh, you can do this. But if I have a doubt, like a single doubt in my brain, I may as well hang my ice tools up, right?

[36:05] Sonya: Yeah, we don't need that.

[36:07] Allie: No. So it's so important to work on mindset and to weed out the negative self talk and beliefs. And they all come from somewhere. I mean, everyone's got their own journey, but of course they come from when you're a kid and they come from when you're little and your parents teach you things and you just assume that's the way and they did the best that they could and all this kind of thing. But it's a constant process. Cool.

[36:44] Sonya: It is. And it's super important and I love that. That is where you invest a lot of your time, obviously, when you're self educating and supporting yourself and gaia. I am going to make sure we link through to that streaming platform in the show notes. I'm going to go look at it myself. Ellie, thank you so much for your time. Good luck. I will be cheering you on from the sidelines. I can't wait to hear from you, send your messages, see how you're going. And I know everybody here will be cheering you along as well. Maybe when you're back in five months time, we can get you on for a follow up episode. You will have so many stories and we can catch up and hear what's coming next after your first five months out there on the 14 Peaks Project. Thanks, Ali.

[37:32] Allie: Thank you so much.

[37:37] Sonya: Thank you for listening today. I am so grateful to have these conversations with incredible women and experts, and I'm grateful that you chose to hit play on this episode of Dear Menopause. If you have a minute of time today, please leave a rating or a review. I would love to hear from you because you are my biggest driver for doing this work. If this chat went way too fast for you and you want. More, head over to Stellarwomen.com Au podcast for the show notes. And while you're there, take my midlife quiz to see why it feels like midlife is messing with your head.

[38:19] Allie: You subscribe our.