Many moons ago I read Into Thin Air and it sparked a Mt. Everest fascination in me. I can’t say that before 2015 I thought overmuch about the highest peak in the world, and I’m someone who enjoys a good walk but has zero intention of ever tackling anything like mountain climbing. But… I have been devouring content about the mountain and other thirteen 8,000-meter peaks ever since. So, when I spotted reviews of Mark Synnott’s The Third Pole I added it to my list and zoomed it to the top to get it to cover the Asia square in this year’s bingo (although that didn’t work out).
I enjoyed my time with The Third Pole greatly. Whenever someone asked me what I was reading I was happy to answer, explaining how the author, Mark Synnott who had no intention of ever climbing Everest, gets told the story of the missing camera that Sandy Irvine and George Mallory had with them on their ill-fated 1924 push to the peak. Mallory’s body had been found in 1999, with no camera, and nearly 20 years later some sleuths thought they had a location for Irvine’s with the tantalizing possibility that the camera might be with him. And if they could find the camera, they could possibly determine if the pair had made it to the peak before meeting their end. A team gets put together including Synnott and they get funding to attempt the expedition for the 2019 climbing season – when Everest infamously “broke”.
Synnott weaves together the history of the 1924 expedition, of the push to conquer the ‘third pole’ after successful expeditions to the north and south poles, the state of Everest climbing today, the 2019 season, and his personal experiences on the mountain. It isn’t evenly balanced, but Synnott does what I love best about these stories. He tells us a universal truth by shedding light on the details.