Grab Instantly The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, And The Climbing Life Penned By Mark Synnott Available As EPub

was not my typical read but I found myself getting sucked into the story each time I picked up the book.
I dont know much about rock climbing but am completely fascinated with it now, These guys are courageous and stretch themselves beyond natural limits, I also believe you have to be a little bit “crazy” to free solo and complete some of the climbs they do.
Every time they go up they tempt their fate, I could never take the chances the climbers do and could barely get through some parts of the book because I felt like I was out there on that rock with the author and was scared myself.


The story of Alex Honnald is fascinating, a little sad at times and also inspiring, I thought this was a great read and followed it up by watching the moviewhich I also highly recommend, El Capitan, also known as El Cap, is a vertical rock formation in Yosemite, The granite monolith is aboutm high and is a legendary mountain for rock climbers, It tookdays to climb it the first time, and it was considered amongst the community of climbers that a free solo attempt would be so far beyond human limits and endurance that it was virtually impossible.


Climbing with a rope is pretty dangerous stuff, but climbing without is borderline insane in my opinion, People have been doing it for a while though, and Synnotts book takes us back to the origins of free climbing with Royal Robbins and Warren Harding as well as potted histories of the men known as the Stonemasters who made the Yosemite peaks their own.
But this book is primarily about the rise and rise of Alex Honnold, who took the discipline of free solo climbing to another level literally.


In June, Honnold surpassed himself, by ascending El Cap without a rope in under four hours,

This achievement was seen as staggering across the climbing community and brought numerous accolades for this, For those watching, it was a constant heart in mouth moment though,

In lots of ways I liked this book, Synnott is a climbing insider and knows all the people that were involved in this as well as being steeped in the history of climbing in that part of the USA.
He writes well too. The very end of the book is incredibly fastpaced as describes the climb and the emotions going through all of those watching him ascend.
However, I felt it was a little too stretched out as it took a long time to get to that point.
Not a bad book overall,.The climbing community had long considered a "free solo" ascent of El Capitan an impossible feat so far beyond human limits that it was not worth thinking about.
When Alex Honnold topped out at:am on June,, having spent fewer than four hours on his historic ascent, the world gave a collective gasp.
His friend Tommy Caldwell, who free climbed with a rope the nearby Dawn Wall in, called Alex's ascent "the moon landing of free soloing.
" The New York Times described it as "one of the great athletic feats of any kind, ever, " It was "almost unbearable to watch," writes Synnott,

This majestic work of personal history 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.
Synnott paints an authentic, wry portrait of climbing history, profiling Yosemite heroes John Bachar, Peter Croft, Dean Potter, and the harlequin tribe of climbers known as the Stonemasters.
A veteran of the North Face climbing team and contributor to National Geographic, Synnott weaves in his own amateur and professional experiences with poignant insight and wit.
Tensions burst on the milehigh northwest face of Pakistan's Great Trango Tower photographer/climber Jimmy Chin miraculously persuades an intransigent 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, dialedin dance with nature.
They dare beyond the ordinary, but this story of the sublime is really about all of us, Who doesn't need to face down fear and make the most of the time we have Overall I enjoyed this book, particularly for the genre, but I'll confess that, over the years, I've become far more sensitive to the limiting tropes of that genre, i.
e. 'amazing heroic adventure dude and it's always a dude doing amazing heroic adventures' and sometimes being sad to the point of maudlin excess about fellow climbers killed in the mountains, but ultimately concluding with variations on cliches about 'doing what we love' or 'finding inspiration and sharing wonder' or 'it really isn't that risky, when you think about the dangers of freeway driving.
. . '

to be clear, I don't mean these as criticisms: I've said some of these things myself, more than a few times.
I'm simply pointing out that they are indeed cliches of the mountaineering genre, although of course that genre has become more complex, not least since the popular success of Krakauer's "Into Thin Air.
"

Synnott writes well indeed, at times beautifully and he tries to overcome the limits of the genre, He doesn't always succeed, but when he does, I'd say he's at least as successful as Andrew Toddhunter, who crafted a structurally similar book around the life of Dan Osman "The Fall of the Phantom Lord".
Like Toddhunter, Synnott is sharing the life of a remarkable figure by telling his own story, This is, of course, a venerable narrative strategy, but it's relatively novel in the 'climbing and mountaineering' genre, I think it works well, in both of these books,

The fairness and coherence of Synnott's reporting on Alex Honnold does falter at points, Indeed, there's a very brief point where the story gets weird, and one reviewer has fixated on that strange passage, reading the rest of the book in light of the gendered elements of this fleeting moment in the narrative.
I don't think that critical reading is entirely fair, but it's also not wrong, Synnott doesn't always succeed in reflecting on how much of his own life has involved buying into a particular vision of masculinity, backed by socioeconomic privilege: dirtbag rockclimbers and beachbum surfers rarely start life in poverty they are overwhelmingly white and of European settler ancestry and of course this hardly surprising, given that mountaineering began as a sport for aristocratic English and European gentlemen of leisure.


That said, I do think Synnott is trying hard and often successfully to acknowledge some of these very real problems.
The dominance of Lynn Hill in Yosemite climbing and beyond is acknowledged, although much more could be said about her story, her legacy.
Also, as far as I know, this is is the first book in the climbing genre to tell the deeply disturbing story of how indigenous peoples were driven out of Yosemite valley, their stories and voices erased by statesanctioned brutality and settler indifference.


Mark is also clearly trying to weigh his candid and balanced recollections against his obvious affection and deep respect for Alex Honnold.
His recollections of Alex Lowe are likely to be more controversial among climbing elders, although whether you conclude "salacious rubbish inspired by jealousy!" or "about time someone told the truth!" will probably depend on where you sit in a complicated web of friendships and cliques that came out of the transformation of North American climbing, from a dirtbag antiestablishment lifestyle to a complex global multimedia adventure industry.


Yes, I recommend this book: it's an honest and uncompromising account not only of the climbing life, but of how that life has changed over the decades.
Could that account be more introspective and inclusive Yes, definitely, but Mark labours mightily to tell his story in a way that gives most of the players a voice, even when some of those voices would likely disagree with his interpetations.
In the end that's all you can really ask of an author: to tell their story and give others a voice.


Oh, and it's also a detailed account of one of the greatest feats in climbing history, by a complex and compelling character, Alex Honnold, so there's that too! I enjoy reading books on mountaineering and climbing even though I would never be able to do the incredible things these athletes do.
Therefore, I was very interested in this story how could someone climb that part of Yosemite without the aid of roles and other equipment As far as THAT went, this book delivered

on that promise.


However, the journey to get there was tedious, There were a LOT of stories that were more about the author and his climbing career instead of Alex, although when Alex was the subject, it was entertaining.
Also, most books I have read on the sport are written in language not too technical so readers who are not climbers can understand better.
That wasn't the case with this book as I was frequently flipping back to remember what what being discussed or what certain terms meant.
I

Since I did finish the book and the story is gripping, I give this book a, passing grade. of three, but would recommend only readers who are climbers or have an advanced knowledge of the sport read it.
I obtained this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, .