Alex Honnold completes free solo climb of Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan
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On Sunday 25 January Alex Honnold made a daring free solo climb of one of the tallest buildings in the world, the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan. After being postponed for a day due to bad weather, the highly publicised event was broadcast live on Netflix; it took Honnold 1 hour and 31 minutes to climb the 509-meter building. This has been climbed before, with ropes and a harness, in 2004 by legendary French climber Alain Robert who gave commentary on Honnold’s progress in CNN’s live coverage.
Honnold's most famous climb without a rope is the first - and currently only - free solo of El Capitan via the Freerider route in 2017. His historic ascent brought him world-wide attention thanks to the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo directed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, and it is likely that the "biggest urban free solo climb ever" has now brought him considerably more fame.
Not that Honnold cares much about this. In the run-up to the climb he stated his motivation for doing it was because it had been a "lifelong dream" of his to climb a skyscraper, and that he was fundamentally curious to find out what climbing a man-made building would feel like. Having one person watching him, or 2 million live, made no difference to him at all he stated.
The feat was greeted with huge enthusiasm, but had also drawn criticism, not only because live streaming of an event that could potentially end in death, but also because the 40-year-old is married and with two young children. Honnold argued his ascent was indeed high consequence, but extremely low risk, as the actual climbing was well-within his ability. In addition to 30 years experience of cutting-edge climbing, he trained specifically for the Taipei solo, both at home and on the building prior to the free solo.
In a CNN interview with Elizabeth Wagmeister 10 days ago he gave more insight into his what drives him to put his life on the line, by explaining "I think about risk and death and my mortality far more than the average person, just because if you’re out doing these types of climbs, you can’t help but think about these things. You’re obviously faced with your mortality all the time, but you're choosing to do so anyway, because it provides richness and meaning to your life."
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