Alex Honnold, the rock climber who scaled El Capitan without a rope in the Oscar-winning film “Free Solo,” will swap his usual stone slab for steel and glass this week.
Untethered, he will crawl up Taipei 101, a 101-story skyscraper in Taiwan, wearing custom climbing shoes to gain better traction on the glass, a chalk bag to keep his sweaty grip from slipping and his signature red T-shirt. It will be streamed live to a global audience on Netflix on Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern time.
Although urban climbing, or “buildering,” is a respected niche within the sport — one that comes with dedicated websites and underground guidebooks — it is typically done in the shadows, without permission. Honnold’s attempt will be sanctioned and sensationalized.
Even Tommy Caldwell, one of Honnold’s closest climbing partners over the years, considered it “a media stunt” when he first heard about it, and it is fair to wonder why the 40-year-old Honnold is doing it. One slip could send him tumbling to his death, and the stakes are higher this time. He’s not some young climber living on his own in a van anymore. He has a wife, Sanni McCandless Honnold, and two daughters under 4.
I recently met Honnold at his compound on the wild western fringe of Las Vegas. Our conversation began on his back porch, moved into his electric pickup truck, which he gunned to over 100 miles per hour, and continued between his attempts at sending one of the hardest routes on the limestone ceiling of Clear Light Cave, a sport climbing Mecca, where each successive effort was eventually snuffed out by full body failure. It’s a ritual he has been performing twice a week to build upper body strength. The chunky holds there are similar to those he’ll need to cling to if he is to conquer the striking 1,667-foot Taipei tower, which he intends to do in under two and a half hours.
This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
What was the inspiration behind the Taipei 101 climb?
The idea of climbing a building isn’t anything new. As a kid, I climbed buildings quite a lot. I haven’t as an adult because it’s illegal. Basically it’s just really hard to get permission to climb a building, and anytime you get permission, you kind of have to say yes. And this particular building, Taipei 101, it’s a perfect climbing objective in that the spectacular climbing is uncontrived. The easiest way up the building is also the coolest way up the building. You’re pinching the very outer edge, climbing over these ornamental dragon heads. There are a bunch of features on the building that just make it insanely fun, like a jungle gym, in that the holds are wide pinches that feel comfortable in your hand.
You’re not worried that you’ll slip?
It’s steel and glass, so yeah, it’s slippery (laughing), but you hold on tight. It’s not like some rock climbing objectives where you’re hanging on to these tiny millimeter edges.
When I watched “Free Solo” again, I was reminded how meticulous you are in dissecting your climb from pitch to pitch. You memorize the problems, you choreograph the movements. You really train for specific moments. How did you go about that with this climb, and where are the challenges?
I went through the same process with the building. I practiced, took some notes. Actually, in this case, because of the TV thing, I asked the production company to send me all the footage. So I have a bunch of photos and video of different sequences, because that’s even easier than notes. You can literally see it.
You didn’t have video to study for El Cap, but you were there all the time.
I was spending three months a year or something in Yosemite, going up and down. Like, yeah, I could do basically whatever I wanted. With a building, you have much tighter restrictions on access, but you also need less time to practice.
How many times did you climb the building in preparation for this?
Two or three.
With ropes?
Yeah, all with ropes.
When you and I first met a couple of years ago, I remember asking you if you had any other solo missions in mind, and you sort of shrugged it off. You seemed content to me. I never got the feeling you had anything more to prove when it came to soloing. So what, if anything, has changed?
I don’t remember what year we talked, but basically, since “Free Solo,” I’ve done a bunch of big solo projects. I just do things kind of sporadically that I’m excited about, and nobody really knows or cares. Like, it just doesn’t matter because it’s not El Cap.
See that big mountain on the left there? It’s called Mount Wilson. For the last year and a half, I’ve been scheming to do the Wilson quad, climbing four routes in a day. I might try to do that in a week or two.
When you solo now, do you tell Sanni? Is she the only one who knows? Do you have a list of people you tell? Or do you just go?
No, no, like the Wilson thing, Josh [his climbing partner Josh McCoy] obviously knows. Sanni told me that she doesn’t think it’s a family-friendly objective. She thinks I shouldn’t do it.
[He did it anyway, completing the traverse up 4,500 vertical feet on Dec. 15, in 12 and a half hours.]
What about Taipei? Is she comfortable with that?
Well, she’s stressed about the event side of it, like the spectacle. She’s worried about all the public commentary. I don’t think she’s worried about the actual climbing.
Does that come into play for you? Do you censor your ambitions because of the family?
I mean, maybe not too much. Certainly no one’s ever goading me on. No one’s encouraging me to do harder things. Everyone’s kind of like, Why don’t you stay at home, play with the kids? So it means that if I’m going to do something, I have to be really psyched about it.
Is Taipei going to make that list?
Yeah. I mean, I think it’ll be the tallest building free solo to date.
Let’s talk about what’s on the line for you. During El Cap, you lived in a van. You had a new relationship, but you were almost cavalier about the consequences. You didn’t feel your death would hang over Sanni. How has that changed for you? Not just with Sanni but with your daughters.
Honestly, I don’t think the calculus has changed that much. Because I never wanted to die. Which is why I put so much effort into the preparation and training. I mean, implicit in the question is that I have more to live for, and, yeah, I have more to live for, and I’m still doing my very best to not die.
But it’s not just that you have more to live for. It’s that your loss would be felt in a deep way for more than just Sanni.
Kind of. I mean, baby Alice wouldn’t remember. Baby June probably wouldn’t remember. She’ll be 4 in another month. It’d be felt, and obviously it’d be super hard for Sanni, but they’d be well provided for. I don’t feel like I’d be leaving them in the lurch. They wouldn’t even necessarily be traumatized their whole lives.
Your dad died when you were 13. What kind of impact did that have on you?
I mean, you never really know because, at the time, you’re just kind of like, That’s life and shit happens. It was just kind of a stark reminder that your time is finite.
Do you and Sanni talk about this at all — the decision to put your life at risk, and what the consequences would be for your family?
You mean what happens if I die?
Yeah.
I mean not really. We don’t talk about it a ton because obviously it’s upsetting for her. We occasionally joke — you know, gallows humor — about how long she would wait to start dating again. How hard it would be to find somebody with the kids, and all that. But that’s just us joking around.
But do you think about it much?
Yeah, I mean, you can’t go soloing … every time you go soloing in the mountains, you consider … that things can end quickly.
Is this your biggest payday?
Maybe. It’s less than my agent aspired to. I mean, I would do it for free. If there was no TV program and the building gave me permission to go do the thing, I would do the thing because I know I can, and it’d be amazing. I mean, just sitting by yourself on the very top of the spire is insane. And so, you know, if there wasn’t the whole spectacle around it, and I just had the opportunity to go do it by myself, I’d be fine with that. I would do that, but in this case, there is a spectacle. I’m not getting paid to climb the building. I’m getting paid for the spectacle. I’m climbing the building for free.
How much are you getting paid?
I’m not gonna say. It’s an embarrassing amount.
Is it?
Actually, if you put it in the context of mainstream sports, it’s an embarrassingly small amount. You know, Major League Baseball players get like $170 million contracts. Like, someone you haven’t even heard of and that nobody cares about.
Ten?
Million?
Yeah.
No! So in that case, yeah, an embarrassingly small amount.
[Honnold will be paid in the mid-six figures for the climb, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.]
What’s the plan on game day? There’s a couple of days, right? You have the scheduled day and a backup day. How will you know if it’s game on?
If it’s not raining, I’m doing it.
Are there bailouts?
Yeah. Any balcony I could just go inside and use the elevator.
But do you not get the full amount if you don’t complete the climb?
I actually don’t know what the contract is, and, honestly, I don’t care. If I’m bailing for some reason, it’s because I need to bail, and then it doesn’t matter what a contract says.
Do you have life insurance?
No.
You don’t? No one will insure you?
Don’t know. I think it would be too expensive, but I think insurance in general is kind of a scam. The whole point is to pay in. There’s a reason insurance companies are financial giants. Because everyone else is getting screwed.
Have you ever been asked if there’s a narcissism element in what you do?
That applies to probably 50 percent of what humans do. There are very few human activities that are really meaningful. There are a handful of things where you’re legitimately contributing to society, but even most people with real jobs aren’t really doing anything for the goodness of man. If you’re a finance bro, like, you are not helping humanity. Most human activity is basically self-serving. I don’t think this is any worse than anything else people are doing.
What do you hope viewers take away from watching this attempt? What do you hope to leave them with?
When there were some announcements about climbing the building, there was some criticism in the climbing world of like, Oh, you know, that’s stupid, that’s a stunt. But my hope is that people watching it will at least see the joy in it. Like when you’re a kid and look around and think, It’d be amazing to climb up there. As an adult, that gets hammered out of you. “Why would you do that? That’s dangerous. Do you have insurance?” You know, all that type of stuff. But there’s something to be said for maintaining that childlike joy of just looking at it, like, That is amazing. I want to do that.
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