The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life by Mark Synnott (Ex-Library HC/DJ)

In Mark Synnott’s unique window on the ethos of climbing, his friend Alex Honnold’s astonishing “free solo” ascent of El Capitan’s 3,000 feet of sheer granite is the central act. When Honnold topped out at 9:28 a.m. on June 3, 2017, having spent fewer than four hours on his historic ascent, the world gave a collective gasp. The New York Times described it as “one of the great athletic feats of any kind, ever.”  Synnott’s personal history of his own obsession with climbing since he was a teenager - through professional climbing triumphs and defeats and the dilemmas they render - makes this a  deeply reported, enchanting revelation about living life to the fullest. What are we doing if not an impossible climb? Synnott 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. Painting an authentic, wry portrait of climbing history and profili