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SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 SPORTS BOOK AWARDS
Veteran climber Mark Synnott never planned on climbing Mount Everest, but a hundred-year mystery lured him into an expedition–and an awesome history of passionate adventure, chilling tragedy, and human aspiration unfolded.
On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and “Sandy” Irvine set out to stand on the roof of the world, where no one had stood before. They were last seen eight hundred feet shy of Everest’s summit. A century later, we still don’t know whether they achieved their goal, decades before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay did, in 1953. Irvine carried a Kodak camera with him to record their attempt, but it, along with his body, had never been found. Did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit and take a photograph before they fell to their deaths?
Mark Synnott made his own ascent up the infamous North Face along with a filmmaker using drone technology higher than any had previously flown. His goal: to find Irvine’s body and the camera he carried that might have held a summit photo on its still-viable film. Synnott’s quest led him from oxygen-deprivation training to archives and museums in England, to Kathmandu, the Tibetan High Plateau, and up the North Face into a storm during a season described as the one that broke Everest. An awful traffic jam of climbers at the very summit resulted in tragic deaths. Sherpas revolted. Chinese government agents turned adversarial. An Indian woman crawled her way to safety and survival. Synnott himself went off the safety rope–if he had slipped, no one would have been able to save him–desperate to solve the mystery.
A magnificent story a la The Lost City of Z, The Third Pole conveys the miracle of a mountain the world wants to own, and the first explorers who may have done so.
(P)2021 Headline Publishing Group Ltd
Veteran climber Mark Synnott never planned on climbing Mount Everest, but a hundred-year mystery lured him into an expedition–and an awesome history of passionate adventure, chilling tragedy, and human aspiration unfolded.
On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and “Sandy” Irvine set out to stand on the roof of the world, where no one had stood before. They were last seen eight hundred feet shy of Everest’s summit. A century later, we still don’t know whether they achieved their goal, decades before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay did, in 1953. Irvine carried a Kodak camera with him to record their attempt, but it, along with his body, had never been found. Did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit and take a photograph before they fell to their deaths?
Mark Synnott made his own ascent up the infamous North Face along with a filmmaker using drone technology higher than any had previously flown. His goal: to find Irvine’s body and the camera he carried that might have held a summit photo on its still-viable film. Synnott’s quest led him from oxygen-deprivation training to archives and museums in England, to Kathmandu, the Tibetan High Plateau, and up the North Face into a storm during a season described as the one that broke Everest. An awful traffic jam of climbers at the very summit resulted in tragic deaths. Sherpas revolted. Chinese government agents turned adversarial. An Indian woman crawled her way to safety and survival. Synnott himself went off the safety rope–if he had slipped, no one would have been able to save him–desperate to solve the mystery.
A magnificent story a la The Lost City of Z, The Third Pole conveys the miracle of a mountain the world wants to own, and the first explorers who may have done so.
(P)2021 Headline Publishing Group Ltd
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Reviews
The Third Pole is an elegy of extremes, a white-knuckle tale of obsession and survival. From the archives of London's Royal Geographical Society to a tent battered by howling winds in the Death Zone, Mark Synnott puts it all on the line in his quest to solve Mount Everest's most enduring mystery.
A hundred-year-old detective story with a new twist. A high-altitude adventure. The best Everest book I've read since Into Thin Air. Synnott's climbing skills take you places few will ever dare to tread, but it's his writing that will keep you turning pages well past bedtime.
Almost seventy years after my father, Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, climbed the summit of Chomolungma with the British 1953 Expedition, Western narratives about Mount Everest continue to be haunted by the question whether it was Mallory and Irvine who had been the first to stand on the summit. Mark Synnott's The Third Pole pursues this mystery and brings us closer to closing this chapter of mountaineering history. I learned a lot from this book.
Join Mark Synnott on a quest for an artifact that could change Everest mountaineering history. Part detective story, part high adventure, Synnott engages obsessed historians, dodges Chinese bureaucrats, and ultimately risks his life high on the mountain's north face. As the tension rises, he discovers astounding strengths in his fellow climbers, tragic frailty, and an ineffable truth he never imagined.
The author and adventurer Mark Synnott skillfully describes early-twentieth-century exploration, then dives into a story about Everest that merges mystery, adventure, and history into a single tragic bundle. . . . Synnott knows how to keep readers turning the pages, and they will speed their way to his mystery's resolution.
Both a gripping adventure story and an engrossing historical mystery.
If you're only going to read one Everest book this decade, make it The Third Pole. . . A riveting adventure.
Uncovers the dangerous obsession that tackling this behemoth holds today.
A hold-your-breath story that features the author's own hazardous journey and exploration of the motives behind climbers' obsession with reaching dangerous heights.
Captivates with mystery and adventure.
The book is a fascinating tale and forces the reader to constantly ask themselves, What would I do? in each situation.
Mark Synnott's new book . . . is as rewarding as any Everest book can be, with history and geography wonderfully woven into the author's own climb, in 2019.
As in his previous book, the author's writing comes alive when he recounts life on the mountain. . . . This is a must-read for outdoor enthusiasts and readers of Everest and exploration history.
[A] hair-raising mountaineering story . . . A fine tale of adventure and exploration sure to please any fan of climbing and Everest lore.
Synnott weaves back and forth between the early climbing pioneers' experiences and his 2019 expedition, harrowing in its own right. A gifted storyteller, he proves firsthand the irresistible lure and perilous dangers of climbing Mount Everest.