Read Online The Impossible Climb Alex Honnold El Capitan and the Climbing Life eBook Mark Synnott

Product details File Size 10839 KB Print Length 377 pages Publisher Allen & Unwin (April 1, 2019) Publication Date April 1, 2019 Language English ASIN B07L9P95G2

The Impossible Climb Alex Honnold El Capitan and the Climbing Life eBook Mark Synnott Reviews

• After watching the documentary 'Free Solo' and seeing the title of this book, I thought it would be a more detailed insight into Alex Honnold's climb up El Cap. But this book is foremost about the author and his climbing, followed by the history of climbing in general and the previous generations of climbers before Alex, and merely sprinkled with some details about Alex. In fact, the amount of pages dedicated to Alex's actual free solo account up El Cap are only a few pages at the very end of the book. Maybe if you're a climber (I am not) this book would be more interesting. Or maybe if you know the author and want to know more about him, it would be more interesting. But if you want to know more about Alex Honnold and his free solo of El Cap, just stick with the documentary or read his own book 'Alone on the Wall'. I also didn't think the author painted a very flattering image of Alex Honnold, not that I know Alex, but the documentary projects a more flattering image of Alex than this book. (It also references at least a dozen times about Alex and his bowel movements which is just TMI in my opinion.) After finishing the book, it just felt like the author was capitalizing (riding the coat tails perhaps?) on Alex's famed climb up El Cap seeing as the book came out not long after the documentary was released.
• I wanted to like this book, after seeing Free Solo, and reading Alex Honnold's account, as well as Tommy Caldwell's book on the Dawn Wall climb. But this book is a strange mishmash of stuff, including some history of Yosemite climbing, and a lot about the author's preoccupation with his own mortality , as well as his relationship with an earlier superstar, Alex Lowe. It also has an oddly chosen group of unrelated photos, very few of which are of Alex Honnold or even of El Capitan or Yosemite. The author is a good writer and may have interesting stories to tell, but this book seems like a misguided attempt to ride the bandwagon of Free Solo. I very rarely write critical reviews, but feel almost as though this book is marketed under false pretenses.
• I have never, and I shall never climb a cliff of any height, but devouring Mark Synnott's brilliant and riveting book The Impossible Climb gave me enormous joy. If, as a reader, you crave context, and there is context galore, this book is for you. If you wonder how these elite climbers, both male and female, balance the hunger for risk with the recognition that staying alive is essential to providing the very opportunities for that risk taking, this book will move you and challenge your assumptions about the sport. If you harbor a fascination for the history of great climbers and their historic expeditions, this book provides a rare, even profound education. Yes, the book culminates with Alex Honnold's epic free solo of El Capitan, but this book is about so much more. There are so many impossible climbs described in this book, not just the final one. It is about the ethos of climbing, the passion that possesses every climber. Synnott invites you into this universe, on every level, and what every reader will be able to see and understand and feel is the absolute honesty, the fierce authenticity that such a life requires. This book is, of course, about the human condition. It is no accident that Synnott and Honnold bonded over the sharing of literature and ideas during the early expeditions together. Brothers Karamazov, The Things They Carried, Walden, religion, philosophy all provided that connection in this remarkable friendship, a friendship that grows and evolves and ultimately becomes an essential part of the final drama. I learned so much from this book, and I found that the meticulous detail about the climbing techniques became important to me. Even the jargon charmed, and the excesses of how one survives for days on the side of a mountain or deep in a slot canyon left me breathless. The writing is powerful, the perspective universal, yet intimate. Free soloing will never be on my dance card, but I rejoice that Mark Synnott made climbing accessible to me and enriched my understanding of the human spirit.