Mark Synnott – Carol's Notebook

Author: Mark Synnott

Mark Synnott is a New York Times bestselling author, a pioneering big wall climber and one of the most prolific adventurers of his generation. His search for unclimbed and unexplored rock walls has taken him on more than 30 expeditions to places like Alaska, Baffin Island, Greenland, Iceland, Newfoundland, Patagonia, Guyana, Venezuela, Pakistan, Nepal, India, China, Tibet, Uzbekistan, Russia, Cameroon, Chad, Borneo, Oman and Pitcairn Island. Closer to home, Mark has climbed Yosemite’s El Capitan 24 times, including several one-day ascents.

Mark was one of the first climbers to extensively explore the remote east coast of Baffin Island, in Arctic Canada. He has pioneered four big wall first ascents on the island, including a grade VII on the 4700-foot north face of Polar Sun Spire. Most recently, in the spring of 2019, Mark summited Mount Everest via the Northeast Ridge, an adventure chronicled in The Third Pole: MYSTERY, OBSESSION, AND DEATH ON MOUNT EVEREST.

When he’s not in the mountains, Mark works with The North Face Global Athlete Team and he is highly sought after as a storyteller and motivational speaker. Mark has also worked extensively in the film and television industry, both in front of and behind the camera. An accomplished journalist, Mark is a regular contributor to National Geographic magazine, and is the author of the national bestseller, The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan and the Climbing Life and Baffin Island: Climbing, Trekking, and Skiing.

Mark is also an IFMGA certified mountain guide, a long time SAR member and first responder, and a trainer for the Pararescuemen of the US Air Force.

I came into The Third Pole not knowing much about Mt Everest and, to be honest, not caring much about it either. But, the book looked interesting and I needed an Everest book for a bingo square. I ended up enjoying it. The mountain, the climbers, the support staff, it's all fascinating. Synnott and his team set out specifically not to summit, but to locate the body of Sandy Irvine, one of two men widely believed to have summited Mt. Everest from the north in 1924, decades before the much better-documented success of the Chinese in 1960. While the body of Irvine's partner, George Mallory, was discovered in 1999, Irvine's had yet to be definitively located, although there was speculation about where it was likely to be found. Armed with a drone to scope out the area before they made the climb, the team set out on a journey that was bound to significantly bend quite a few rules, if...