FEATURE
PUSHING
Boundaries WITH ALLIE PEPPER
Australian mountaineer Allie Pepper is attempting to become the fastest person to reach the true summit of all 14 of the 8000m+ peaks without supplemental oxygen. Speed record aside, the feat has only ever been achieved by a minuscule number of climbers. Allie is aiming to complete it in just under three years. The week before she left Australia, she chatted to Vertical Life’s assistant editor Wendy Bruere about what draws her to such heights.
Allie fell into climbing after misreading a Blue Mountains TAFE brochure. In her early 20s, looking for direction in life, she saw a course in Outdoor Recreation. She loved the outdoors and wanted to re-create herself, so it seemed perfect. Sighting the brochure—and immediately enrolling in the course— came at a time of soul-searching. After high school, Allie had set out to travel. There was a stint of hippie van-life in Australia, partying hard with her punk boyfriend in London, then ditching him in Kathmandu while she set out on a spiritual journey across India and Nepal. Eventually, she landed back in Australia. “After all that searching outside myself, I didn’t find what I was looking for,” Allie said. “I decided I needed a career path as I had low selfesteem.” Luckily outdoor recreation did, in fact, lead to some personal re-creation, ultimately launching Allie’s lifelong obsession with the mountains. She began with rock-climbing and discovered she was quite good at it. 48 WINTER 2023
“I’d grown up in the Blue Mountains but never climbed,” she said. Six months later, Allie was working with the Australian School of Mountaineering, and before too long a work trip to New Zealand for a technical mountaineering course fine-tuned her direction. “It changed my life. I found my passion,” stated Allie. “Straight after the course, I went with another student and we climbed Mount Aspiring together. It was our first peak without someone watching over us to check that we wouldn’t die. I loved it, and I was addicted.” And so began her career as a mountain guide, leading expeditions in Argentina and running Allie Pepper Adventures in Australia’s Blue Mountains and Snowy Mountains. Now in her late 40s, Allie is attempting the hardest challenge of her life: to set a record for the world’s fastest time to reach the true summit of all 14 of the 8000m+ peaks without supplemental oxygen. Project Above the Clouds, a.k.a. 14 Peaks No O2.
