TAIPEI, Taiwan — Superstar American climber Alex Honnold scaled Taiwan’s tallest building without assistance or a safety net in an hour and a half on Sunday morning — while being live-streamed to Netflix’s hundreds of millions of international subscribers.
The hair-raising stunt was the highest free solo climb of an urban structure, according to Netflix. Free solo refers to climbing without protective equipment.
The event was originally scheduled for Saturday but was postponed at the last minute because of bad weather.
Honnold rose to global prominence in 2017 when he became the first person to climb Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan rock face without ropes, a feat that was chronicled in the Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo.” But the ascent of Taipei 101 — a 1,667-foot bamboo-inspired building that rises above the city’s skyline and is the 11th largest skyscraper in the world — was his first major man-made challenge.
Broadcast on Netflix from 9 a.m. local time in Taipei on Sunday, Honnold smiled and took a selfie when he completed the barehanded ascent up the building’s 101 floors — which are home to offices, diplomatic outposts, coffee shops and a high-end mall. He then put on a harness and descended a few floors to a platform, where he hugged his wife.
“The building is singular, and I’ve seen a lot of big buildings in the world. Taipei 101 really is a magnificent building in a beautiful place,” Honnold said in an interview on the 88th floor of the building after finishing the climb. “Now for the rest of my life, I’ll look at this building and be like, that’s so crazy, that’s so cool.”
Wearing a red shirt and yellow shoes, Honnold appeared relatively relaxed as he climbed metal parts of the building’s exterior with chalked hands. Throughout the ascent, he smiled and waved at people inside the building through the glass, including his wife, and spoke to viewers on Netflix via a live microphone.
“Honestly, it’s pretty surreal,” he said at one point in the middle, looking out at the sunny cityscape. “Look at the day! It’s so beautiful.” At another point closer to the top, he told the crowd he was tired.
Spectators lined the streets around the building Sunday morning, craning their necks and cheering as Honnold became an increasingly tiny figure.
One of the fans was Taipei resident Maurice Chen, 48, who climbs as a hobby.
“We all feel inspired by Alex’s climbs,” Chen said. “He shows us that we should all find our own path, do our own thing, regardless of what anyone else says we should do. Maybe this event will inspire more Taiwanese to follow the path less traveled.”
Taipei 101 has been climbed once before — with ropes. As part of its opening celebrations in 2004, climber Alain Robert, often called the “French Spider-Man,” was invited to scale the building, which was then the tallest in the world. The endeavor took four hours, which Robert said was longer than he expected, thanks to an elbow injury and nasty weather.
“I paved the road,” Robert said in an interview. “I am sure he’s going to have a lot of fun, the kind of fun I have had. Now it’s his turn.”
Robert, who has climbed more than 200 skyscrapers across the world, said scaling the Taipei tower was only moderately difficult. (He said the smooth, glassy Areva Tower skyscraper in France, for instance, was much trickier.) And he expressed confidence that Honnold would complete the climb safely.
“It’s not like going and buying your lottery ticket and scratching,” he explained. “No, Alex is relying on his professionalism and his skill and he’ll do it successfully.”
Honnold, who did some practice climbing on the building, said he felt most nervous during the beginning, as he was leaving the ground. Another challenge, he added, was some slippery soot on the building left over from New Year’s Eve fireworks, which are launched from the tower every year. He expects his thumbs and back to be sore in the coming days.
Though even the smallest mistake could be fatal, Honnold is hard to rattle. He said he spent the days leading up to his life-or-death undertaking hiking and biking around Taipei, as well as playing ping pong at his hotel. On Saturday evening, he ate dinner at the Taiwanese dumpling chain Din Tai Fung.
One skyscraper doesn’t seem to be enough for Honnold: Just after completing the historic feat, he said he would jump at the chance to climb another one. “If I had the opportunity, if I was allowed to, I certainly would,” he said.
In an interview with CNN last week, he said that his chance of injury is lower than that of a professional football player during a game. Plus, even if he fell in the middle section, Honnold said, the balconies could catch him and prevent him from falling to his death.
“It seems more dramatic because the consequences are so much higher, but the risk, the actual likelihood of having an injury, are, I would say, close to zero,” he said in the interview. “I feel like it’s going to be fine.”
Honnold, 40, and his wife have two children and live in Las Vegas.
Taiwanese officials, for their part, have worked hard to minimize the risk of the gravity-defying spectacle.
Since beginning discussions with Honnold’s team last summer, the government has held more than 30 meetings with dozens of departments and over 200 people about the climb, said Jennifer Jao, director of the Taipei Film Commission, who coordinated the effort.
These discussions have included ambulance services and traffic control — the building is in the middle of a busy commercial area — as well as weather authorities, who measured the wind speed on the day of the climb, Jao said. In addition, the government assessed the impact of nearby airplane traffic on Honnold and the transmission of the live broadcast.
James Smith, executive producer of the event and head of adventure with Plimsoll Productions, said in an interview that he had more safety meetings than creative meetings before the broadcast.
Working with an external security and risk firm, Secret Compass, they drew up a plan for anything going wrong and worked to ensure, for instance, that none of the camera operators dropped any loose items on Honnold or the crowd, he said.
“My favorite moment is when Alex down climbed” and greeted his wife below, Smith said. “Because then he was safe.”
Taipei 101 also turned to more spiritual preparations this week: The building’s leadership held a bilingual blessing ceremony, with Honnold in attendance, to pray for a successful event. A spokesperson for the building declined to comment in advance of the climb.
But Taiwan — a self-governing island off the coast of China that Beijing claims as its own — also seems eager to milk the attention from hosting such a high-profile event at its landmark skyscraper.
“This is a very rare opportunity for marketing Taipei, and one that may not come again,” said Jao.
Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, congratulated Honnold on social media following the climb, while the high-stakes feat spawned a flurry of media attention in Taiwan and beyond. “Saturday Night Live” parodied Honnold’s climb last week.
SNL’s Sarah Sherman played Honnold’s wife, who said in the sketch that she was “so proud” of her husband for attempting something “a lot of people wouldn’t, because they want to be around for their family — but not him.”
The chairman of Taipei 101, Janet Chia, posted a video of herself on social media last week screaming, “I love Taiwan” at the top of the skyscraper — with a helmet and harness. In a caption alongside the video, she encouraged people to “take risks” and “break tradition.”
Jim Lin, a 26-year-old climbing enthusiast who lives in central Taiwan, said that the event is a win-win for Taiwan and the international community. “Taiwan can see a world-class climber” attempt to climb the building, which has become a “symbol” for its capital city, he said, while global viewers get the chance to learn more about the small island.
“The respect goes both ways,” he added.
Rudy Lu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.
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