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The Third Pole
- My Everest Climb to Find the Truth About Mallory and Irvine
- Narrated by: Steve Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
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The Third Pole
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Summary
Shortlisted for the 2022 Sports Book Awards
Veteran climber Mark Synnott never planned on climbing Mount Everest, but a 100-year mystery lured him into an expedition—and an awesome history of passionate adventure, chilling tragedy and human aspiration unfolded.
On June 8th, 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 800 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.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Charles Palmer
- 12-11-23
Excellent
Spoilers ahead:
Did Mallory and Irvine make the summit? Did the CCP find Irvine's body and remove it from the mountain to ensure that Chinas first ascent from the North would never be questioned? Do the Chinese have the Kodak Vest Pocket Camera that the British climbers took with them? Apparently Mallory's body is also now missing from the mountain.
If the above questions are yes then the CCP has committed yet another appalling crime against history, let alone their own people. Even if M&I made it to the top, they didn't come home. a successful expedition involves returning so what possible threat could such a discovery have on China's successful summit AND return?
Mallory's life was molded by geopolitical events and like all of his generation, the consequences of living through the Great War. It would be ironic indeed if his legacy is being airbrushed because of geopolitical relationships 100 years after his death on the mountain.
This is a great book, Mark approaches the characters of George and Sandy beautifully and in particular spends much time on Sandy's short life. So often written off as the 'piano shifter' to George's 'piano maestro' this extraordinary young man has all too often been written off as second fiddle, when in his own right, he was not only an athlete of extraordinary ability, but he was a precocious scientific genius who made the Oxygen sets actually practical by modification and, when a schoolboy, had sent his own design for an interruptor gear to allow a machine gun to fire through a propeller to the war office.
Mark weaves his own story of the expedition into the story of M&I and much distinction is made between the freedom and dedication to exploration of the early expedition, versus the commercialized and highly controlled (and policed) production line of Everest climbs in 2019. He includes an excellent description of the 'traffic jam' of 2019 and the resultant tragic loss of 11.
it's a great book.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 24-05-21
Excellent
Loved it managed to listen to it in 2 sessions.
Would have preferred Mark to have read it. Think that would have made it perfect.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- L. Edwards
- 22-02-23
Really enjoyed this
Not one for mountaineering books usually but I absolutely loved this. There is a YouTube film of this summit attempt called the ghosts above for anyone who wants to see
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Mark Chase
- 05-05-22
Title does not play
Title does not play past chapter two. Hope this will be resolved as soon as possible
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 11-11-21
Disappointing
Veers off in a multitude of irrelevant directions to make up the page-count. Story line jumps back and forth for no apparent reason. A hard listen & one I shall not finish.
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3 people found this helpful