Mark Synnott

Home: Jackson, New Hampshire, United States

Nicknames: Scrappy, Mohican

Favorite music: "I kind of tend toward easy listening - my friends laugh at me."

How he relaxes: "I love trail running. Beers make me feel good."

What’s in his bag that he can’t live without: "Books, books, books."

About Mark:
After graduating from Middlebury College in 1993, Mark Synnott had no idea where he was going or what he would do for work. He just knew he wanted to climb. He ended up finding work as a carpenter, since it was conducive to a transient lifestyle. ("Build a house, climb a wall. Build a house, climb a mountain.") Then, in 1996, Mark spent 70 days in Baffin Island, Canada, climbing the 4,700-foot north face of Polar Sun Spire, an ascent that changed his life by showing him what was possible with big-wall climbing. He said goodbye to his carpenter’s job and never looked back. Many, many big-wall and alpine climbing adventures have transpired since then, taking Mark to such places as Patagonia, Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, the Alaska Range, the Amazon and West Africa. An accomplished free climber, Mark especially likes long adventure trad climbs, such as the infamous "Stratosphere" in Colorado’s Black Canyon or the east face of Mt. Babel in the Canadian Rockies. He has climbed El Capitan 20 times, and in 1997 he snagged the coveted second ascent of El Cap’s hardest line, the Reticent Wall (A5). Equally comfortable on ice and mixed as he is on rock, Mark has climbed Grade 6 test pieces across the U.S. and in the Canadian Rockies, France and Norway.

When he's not in the mountains, Mark works with The North Face research, design and development teams and lectures frequently on his life of adventure. H’s also a successful freelance photojournalist and a senior contributing editor at Climbing magazine. His articles and photos have appeared in many publications in the U.S. and abroad, including National Geographic Adventure, Men’s Journal, Outside and New York magazine. Of all his adventures, Mark sees getting married and having a family as the greatest one yet. He lives in Jackson, New Hampshire, with his wife, Lauren, and sons, William and Matthew.

Greg Child Talking with Mark Synnott
I have known Mark Synnott for several years. We have climbed together on Baffin Island, on Great Sail Peak in 1998, and we went to Cameroon in Africa in 1999 to climb a volcanic tower in a the remote east of that country. Mark "Scrappy" Synnott (his nickname from his down-and-out days in Yosemite) has also written some funny and insightful articles for Climbing magazine, where he is a contributing editor. He's become one of the most active climbers on the alpine expedition scene, visiting exotic mountain areas like the Himalayas on a regular basis, and he does a lot of that exploration using North Face equipment. The exploratory side of climbing has taken him to remote places, from the arctic to the tropics. Mark also has a family: his wife Lauren is expecting their second child right now, and his young boy Wil is the apple of his eye. He was about to leave for an exploratory trip to a mountain range in China when international travel was shaken by the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. While America teeters on the uncertainty of war and adventurers like Mark try to assess where in the world is at risk to terrorism, he has temporarily set his sights closer to home. I spoke to him by phone at his home in Jackson, New Hampshire.

Greg: Have you cancelled your trip to China in the wake of the terrorist attack?

Mark: Yes, we were due to leave a week after the attack to an area near Muli in China. It is near the border of Tibet and China, part of the Himalayas. There are 6000-meter snow peaks and rock tower that have never been climbed. We put a lot of work into organizing it, and we were set to go--then the attack came. We soon realized that it would not be a good time for international travel.

Greg: I bet your wife Lauren is pleased you're not going, since she's having a baby.

Mark: Yes, our second kid is due in September. We had an ultra sound and we know were having a boy. My boy Wil is three.

Greg: Tell me about some of the more recent trips you have done.

Mark: I recently decided that rather than go on big trips in the Himalayas I would focus on going to places closer to home. I went to the Alaska Range in spring with Jared Ogden, and we spent 14 days skiing and climbing. The main route we did was on the Moose's Tooth. We repeated a route called Shaken Not Stirred. That turned into a frightening epic because we bought into the fast and light philosophy of climbing, which means we took almost nothing up the mountain. We decided to traverse across from the middle summit and descend a different route from what we climbed. We only had one rope. We ended up making a crucial error by rappelling down the wrong gully. We rappelled down a gully for a thousand feet-it was the wrong way to go-and we got cliffed out by a cliff the size of half Dome. A storm came in, high winds and a lot of snow. There was no choice but to climb back up the gully. It was do or die. It was a scary position to be in. Jared led the way out. We were both numb to the bone, spindrift was falling on us. Jared did a great job leading us back to the summit ridge. When we got there it was a whiteout. We were strung out. But we found the way down.

Greg: What do you think of all this fast and light way of climbing after that?

Mark: I still think it's the way to go for smaller mountains, but after the Moose's Tooth I think I would take a tiny sleeping bag. We've got the textile technology to build a very warm sleeping bag that weighs a pound and is very compact. That sort of thing could be key to survival.

Greg: When I first met you were crazy about big wall climbing. You were doing speed ascents of el Cap, and you went on to Baffin Island where you did Polar Sun Spire and Great Sail Peak, and in the Himalayas you did Great Trango and Shipton Spire. Have you grown less interested in that sort of climbing now?

Mark: It's so heavyweight. There is tons of gear. You become a slave to hauling it up the mountain. It taught me a lot, and I'll do more of it, but moving fast over alpine terrain has my attention right now.

Greg: I remember sitting in a portaledge with you on Great Sail Peak, surrounded by a literal ton of supplies and gear, and you said 'the only thing you really need on a big wall is determination.' I was in agreement. We knew that if we had enough gear and food we could sit up there forever until we finally got up the wall.

Mark: I'm also planning some climbs in more exotic regions. I'm planning to go to Venezuela to the Angel Falls area. That's where the tallest waterfall in the world is and there are enormous sandstone cliffs around there on plateaus called Tepuis.

Greg: That is Lost World country, isn't it?

Mark: Yes it is a real jungle. On top of the Tepuis, it's a weirdly eroded place, full of tunnels and water shaped towers. I'm going to go with some climbers but also with some botanists and other scientists. Some of the Tepuis have never been summited or visited by researchers so we might find some new critters. I'm looking forward to that trip because I first learned of this place in an old national geographic magazine when I was a kid.