The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession and Death on Mount Everest by Mark Synnott
New York: Dutton, 2021 ISBN 9781524745578
It seems that every year I need to travel to the Himalayas via my armchair and a book. I've read quite a few books about Everest, K2, Kanchenjunga and the other high Himalaya, both historical works and works about attempting to ascend the summits. I came across The Third Pole after watching the film Lost on Everest, which is a documentary about the search for Sandy Irvine's body. This book is the written document of that quest, and so it's part history and part climbing, but also (yet another) insight into the Everest "business", and an interesting record of the politics of Everest from the Chinese side. I found the film in many ways underwhelming and in the end slightly annoying. The book had those elements for me as well, but the last section explains much of why the film feels unfinished and unsatisfactory, which has much to do with both the etiquette of the Sherpas, and the sensitivities of the Chinese Government.
Anyone who is in the remotest degree interested in Everest, climbing, or the Himalaya not only know that George Mallory and Sandy Irvine disappeared in 1924 while attempting to be the first to summit Everest, but also that Mallory's body was found on the mountain in 1999. However Irvine's body has never been found, although there was a report from a climber taking part in the 1960 Chinese ascent that he had seen a dead Englishman on the mountain, which - if his account was accurate - could not have been Mallory.
And that is the premise of this book, and Synnott's journey to Everest. He is intrigued by the mystery of Mallory and Irvine, and a mountaineering acquaintance asks him to join an expedition to search for Irvine's body: more particularly the object of the search is for a camera which Mallory took on his summit push, but was not with his body when it was found. Some have assumed that therefore Irvine must have had the camera at the time of his death, and that the film once developed would solve the mystery of whether the two actually made it to the summit or not.
Along with the development of this narrative The Third Pole documents the 2019 Everest season and the deaths and other incidents, mainly from the Chinese side of the summit. Synott tells the stories of those that died, as well as those that nearly died, and of his friend Cory Richards, who was going to attempt an oxygen-less ascent of the mountain by a previously unclimbed route. In typical American fashion, Synott includes the backstory of many of these people, in what has now become a usual cliched mountain-climbing-book style. This material, along with his description of testing whether drones could be used up high on Everest, is so much filler in a book where the reader wants to know two things - did they find Irvine, and what happened high on the mountain.
Unfortunately most of this filler occurs early in the book, along with Synnott's versions of Mallory and Irvine's biographies and a potted history of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. I wonder how many people will give up before they get to the meat of the book, especially if - as I was - they were disappointed with Lost on Everest. So many mountaineering books these days contain such "human interest" or historical information and it just seems to me to be unnecessary. While I understand that not everyone who picks up Synott's book may know too much about Everest or its history, a quick session on the internet will fill them in - there is no need for over one hundred pages of this stuff.
Once they get to the mountains, the story was more interesting to me. The team had identified an area of the mountain to search using the work of Tom Holzel: he had been interested in the Mallory/Irvine mystery for many years, and was the first to uncover several hitherto unknown facts about the 1924 attempt, including another claim from a Chinese mountaineer who had seen a body that could not have been that of Mallory. Using high resolution pictures of Everest, and using his knowledge of where Mallory's body had been found, Holzel had identified a small section of the mountain where a search for Irvine might prove profitable. The idea of the expedition was to explore this zone initially by flying the drone and filming the search area before going over it on foot.
Synnott weaves the story of his expedition through his stories of the other climbers on the peak at the same time. 2019 was the year of the famous photo of the "conga-line" of climbers, and there were literally hundreds of people trying to summit. Synott's group did not go up the mountain in the first weather window, and so missed the crowding (Synnott writing that when they did summit they were the only team high on the mountain). The stories of the other climbers are interesting, and tragic in some cases, and Synnott writes well about them, in the normal journalistic style of books such as this.
What is interesting about his own expedition as it got closer to pushing up toward the summit is the politics, which they thought were behind them once they got permission to use drones on the mountain. Their first problem came after they decided to delay their attempt to go high. The Chinese, who run this side of the mountain, were keen to pack up for the season, and resented having to stay for Synnott's group. They fed them false weather information to try and get them to come down from the mountain and abandon their attempt. Adding to this Synnott and his group were under the impression that the Sherpas that were employed to help them knew that the purpose of their expedition was not necessarily to summit, but to find Irvine's body. They were disappointed to find that not only were the Sherpas not told this, but that they had a mutiny on their hands when it became clear that the summit was not the aim. The mutiny came about for two reasons: the first being that one of the leaders of the Sherpas was stirring the pot under instruction from the Chinese at Base Camp, trying to scuttle the expedition, and the second being that for the Sherpas, summits are currency - they more they tag the higher wages they can ask for.
The expedition could only progress if it shifted focus to the summit. This was done, and the group headed up and managed to get to the top on May 30. Along the way, Synnott had a close look at the Second Step, to see if he could add anything to the conjecture about whether Mallory and Irvine could have climbed it (he thought it would have been possible for them). On the way back down, Synnott slipped off the fixed ropes, much to the lead Sherpa Lhakpa's dismay, and had a look at the area identified as the most likely place to find Irvine. He was not there, and Synnott continued safely down the mountain.
The question arises, and Synnott discusses it - why were the Chinese so reluctant to let them search for the body? It comes down to prestige, and fear of bad publicity. The Chinese have always claimed that they were the first to climb Everest from the North, and so if Synnott and his team had found evidence that this was not the case, they would have lost face. Synnott also speculates that the Chinese have a great aversion to loss of life on their side of the mountain, and so are very much against excursions off the fixed rope. He also replays rumours that have surfaced claiming that the Chinese not only found Irvine, but got rid of the evidence to forestall just the sort of discovery that Synnott was trying to make.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Irvine has not yet been found, and so the mystery of whether he and Mallory made it to the top remains. For mine it has to be a no - as Edmund Hillary stated, a successful summit means that you not only made it to the top, but that you came back down to tell everyone.
The Third Pole, if you can wade through the unnecessary stuff, is not a bad tale of intrigue and mystery on Everest. It is not a classic of the genre, but is easy to read and digest, and is of some interest.
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