Once I became a mother, I wouldn’t cross the icefall on Everest
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As the Sangria hit, the laughter of the lunchtime crowd at the Una Mas tapas bar reached a crescendo.
Filmmaker Jen Peedom looked anxiously at the iPhone recording in front of her, squished between platters of seafood and peppers. “Do you think you’ll be able to hear this?”
Jen Peedom’s childhood revolved around exercise for well-being.
Credit:Edwina Pickles
The petite filmmaker is big on logistics and challenges; she’s the sort of woman who will climb towards the top of Mt Everest with a film camera strapped across her back. The sort of woman whose concession to avoiding risk post-motherhood was “promising myself and my husband that I wouldn’t go through the icefall. It was my first time on the south side of Everest; there isn’t one of the north side. An icefall is like a jumbly waterfall of ice that has cascaded down the hill very slowly. But it breaks up and some of the blocks of ice are as big as houses and they continually move and creak. It doesn’t matter how good a climber you are. Anything can happen. That was the deal-breaker for me.”