The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life - Hardcover

Synnott, Mark

4.19

2,664 ratings by Goodreads

9781101986646: The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1101986646 ISBN 13: 9781101986646

Publisher: Dutton, 2019

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INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NEW YORK TIMES MONTHLY BESTSELLER
One of the 10 Best Books of March, Paste Magazine

A deeply reported insider perspective of Alex Honnold’s historic achievement and the culture and history of climbing.

“One of the most compelling accounts of a climb and the climbing ethos that I've ever read.”—Sebastian Junger

In Mark Synnott’s unique window on the ethos of climbing, his friend Alex Honnold’s astonishing free solo ascent of El Capitan’s 3,000 feet of sheer granite is the central act. When Honnold topped out at 9:28 A.M. on June 3, 2017, having spent fewer than four hours on his historic ascent, the world gave a collective gasp. The New York Times described it as “one of the great athletic feats of any kind, ever.” Synnott’s personal history of his own obsession with climbing since he was a teenager—through professional climbing triumphs and defeats, and the dilemmas they render—makes this a deeply reported, enchanting revelation about living life to the fullest. What are we doing if not an impossible climb?

Synnott delves into a raggedy culture that emerged decades earlier during Yosemite’s Golden Age, when pioneering climbers like Royal Robbins and Warren Harding invented the sport that Honnold would turn on its ear. Painting an authentic, wry portrait of climbing history and profiling Yosemite heroes and the harlequin tribes of climbers known as the Stonemasters and the Stone Monkeys, Synnott weaves in his own experiences with poignant insight and wit: tensions burst on the mile-high northwest face of Pakistan’s Great Trango Tower; fellow climber Jimmy Chin miraculously persuades an official in the Borneo jungle to allow Honnold’s first foreign expedition, led by Synnott, to continue; armed bandits accost the same trio at the foot of a tower in the Chad desert . . .

The Impossible Climb is an emotional drama driven by people exploring the limits of human potential and seeking a perfect, choreographed dance with nature. Honnold dared far beyond the ordinary, beyond any climber in history. But this story of sublime heights is really about all of us. Who doesn’t need to face down fear and make the most of the time we have?

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Review:

An Amazon Best Book of March 2019: As far as celebrity goes, Alex Honnold’s seems a bit unlikely; self-possessed practitioners of niche sports, performed in the hardest-to-reach corners of the Earth, usually keep to the edges of the mainstream. But much has changed over the last decade: Drones, adventure cameras, and the internet have allowed armchair adventurers and other lookie-loos unprecedented access to the farthest frontiers, as well as the daredevils who push them. And with E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's Free Solo—the Academy Award-winning ride-along with Honnold on his rope-free climb up Yosemite's El Capitan and its 3,000 feet of vertical granite—well, that’s the sort of thing that’ll make you famous.

On assignment for National Geographic, writer Mark Synnott also covered Honnold in Yosemite, and the resulting book,The Impossible Climb, is a must-read for anyone curious about Honnold’s background, personality, and motivations. Synnott shadowed the enigmatic climber for months as he prepared, deliberated, and occasionally wavered over the project. He even followed him up a wall on occasion—Synnott also happens to be a professional climber (yes, that is a thing), and his first-hand experience makes his account much more than a summary of an unprecedented, previously unthinkable feat. Along with Synnott’s recollections of his own first ascents and harrowing adventures with Honnold, Chin, and other legends of the sport, he surveys Yosemite’s climbing culture from the “golden age” rivalry between big-wall pioneers Royal Robbins and Warren Harding, to latter-day risk-takers like Dean Potter, who push the limits of extreme sports, often at the cost of their lives. When asked why anyone would test their fate against a mountain, George Mallory famously said “Because it’s there.” The question is ultimately unanswerable, but The Impossible Climb gives the rest of us a firmer hold, even as we watch from a safer elevation. As a climber might say, “This book goes.” --Jon Foro, Amazon Book Review

About the Author:

Mark Synnott is a twenty-year member of the North Face Global Athlete team. He is a frequent contributor to National Geographic magazine and has written for Outside, Men's Journal, Rock and Ice, and Climbing. He is also an internationally certified mountain guide and a trainer for the Pararescuemen of the United States Air Force. He lives in the Mt. Washington Valley of New Hampshire.

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