#7 [2022/CBR14] The Third Pole by Mark Synnott

I first noticed The Third Pole (2021) by Mark Synnott on NPR's Best Books List. I love climbing and mountaineering, and I've already read a couple of books on Mount Everest. But what really made me read this book (or listen to it on audiobook) was that I recognized Mark Synnott from some North Face expedition presentations that I'd seen on Youtube. Synnott had been onstage with Jimmy Chin and Hazel Findley, some amazing athletes and adventurers. What made me remember him, though, was that he was a very entertaining storyteller, and I figured any book by him would be interesting.

Stories about Mount Everest are always dramatic. At the highest point in the world, an altitude where people are at the very edge of their limit, there is almost no room for error. It is impossible to get someone down from "the death zone" if they are unable to walk on their own. There are countless stories of climbers stepping over dead bodies on the way to the summit. Even more disturbing, there are numerous stories of climbers passing others who are incapacitated and dying while they are heading up to the summit. 

The Third Pole is basically the story of Mark Synnott and his team as they summit Mount Everest, but Synnott makes his story more compelling by weaving in the past. In 1924, Gregory Mallory and Andrew ("Sandy") Irvine died as they attempted to summit Mount Everest. In 1999, explorers found the body of Gregory Mallory, but Irvine's was never found. In 2019, Synnott wanted to go on Everest to see if they could find Irvine's body. They were especially interested in seeing if Irvine had been carrying a camera. If the camera was intact, it might have been possible to develop the film, and see if Irvine and Mallory had made it to the summit before they died. It would upend history and mountaineering to prove that Irvine and Mallory had actually been the first to summit Mount Everest, over twenty-five years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. 

Weaving in Synnott's own experience climbing Mount Everest with the lives and experiences of Mallory and Irvine was already interesting. But Synnott also included the other people struggling up the North side of Mount Everest in 2019. Without even knowing the connection, I watched 14 Peaks on Netflix, which was an amazing documentary of Nepalese mountaineer Nirmal Purja as he and his team climbed all fourteen, 8,000 meter peaks in less than seven months. It is an astonishing achievement, and Nirmal was on Everest at the same time as Synnott. In fact, Nirmal snapped a picture of the traffic jam near the summit as he was on his way down. A number of climbers died that day. It's easy to scoff at inexperienced climbers mucking around where they don't belong, but Synnott details the struggles of Cam, a British woman of Indian descent when she almost dies on the mountain. He gives some humanity to some of those faceless people crowding the summit.

Synnott ended up avoiding the main crush of climbers by waiting for an iffy, second weather window. He details the challenge of trying to placate the Chinese government while still attempting to look for Irvine's body. Although I have no interest in climbing Mount Everest myself, I find stories about it compelling. This is one of the best I've read.