Into the Ice: The Northwest Passage, the Polar Sun, and a 175-Year-Old Mystery

New York Times bestselling author Mark Synnott has climbed with Alex Honnold. He’s scaled Mount Everest. He's pioneered big-wall first ascents, including the north-west face of the mile-high Great Trango Tower, and skied monster first descents. But in 2022, he realized there was a dream he’d yet to achieve: to sail the Northwest Passage in his own boat— a feat only four hundred or so sailors have ever accomplished—and in doing so, try to solve the mystery of what happened to legendary nineteenth-century explorer Sir John Franklin and his ships, HMS Erebus and Terror.

Only a few hundred vessels have ever transited the Northwest Passage, and substantially fewer have done so in a fiberglass-hulled boat like Polar Sun. But Mark was determined to return to the Arctic, where he cut his teeth as a young climber, and in the process investigate one of the great mysteries of exploration: What really happened to Sir John Franklin and his entire 128-man crew, which disappeared into these ice-strewn waters 175 years ago?

In this pulse-pounding travelogue, Mark Synnott paints a vivid portrait of the Arctic, which is currently warming twice as fast as any other part of our planet. He weaves its history and people into the first-person account of his epic journey through the Northwest Passage, searching for Franklin's tomb along the way— all while trying to avoid a similar fate.

In Into the Ice, Mark and his crew race against time and treachero's storms in search of answers to the greatest mystery of all time: What is it that drives someone to risk it all in the name of exploration?