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 Athlete to Athlete Interview
 Greg Child with Mark Synnott The North Face athlete Greg Child uses his unique perspective to get to know the rest of our athlete team - who they are, what inspires them, and what lies ahead. 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. Greg: Are there other trips you are planning? Mark: I'm one of those people who have always got a game plan for the future. I plan stuff out years in advance. I love the planning and research part of expeditioning. Finding a photo in an old book of a beautiful mountain and deciding to find exactly where in the world it is, then launching a trip to it is very rewarding. Some of my dreams are far fetched. But they are all possible with planning. Another place I want to climb in is the Latok region of Pakistan. Unfortunately, I have had to abandon that for the time being because of the geographical location. Greg: Climbers are going to have to change their habits in some ways. Pakistan and the Karakoram are the mother lode of great peaks for many of us, but perhaps they'll be off limits now. Mark: There are other places to go. South America, Alaska, and the Canadian Rockies are all fine places. The good thing about climbing adventures is that you can find them everywhere. |
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