Alex Honnold Completes Biggest Urban Free Solo in History

After wet weather in Taipei City necessitated a rain check, Alex Honnold began climbing around 24 hours after originally scheduled, at 6:00 p.m. Mountain Time on Saturday, January 24.

A possible rain delay had long been part of the event planning process. Wet conditions would considerably raise the difficulty level of the climb, creating unnecessary risk that Honnold wasn’t willing to take.

After clear skies allowed the glass and steel surfaces of the 1,667ft skyscraper to dry out, Honnold officially began his climb at 6:12 p.m, Mountain Time on January 24.

The climb took Honnold approximately one hour, 31 minutes, and 34 seconds. His own crew, including Brett Lowell, the cinematographer behind The Dawn Wall and The Alpinist, filmed his ascent for live broadcast. More friends, climbing partners, and family also joined Honnold in Taiwan for the event. Pro climber Emily Harrington, who recently starred in the documentary Girl Climber, provided live commentary during the Netflix special.

Honnold’s climb represents the tallest urban free solo in history. The highest building that Alain Robert—the unequivocal leader in urban free soloing—has scaled was one of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which stand 1,483ft (452m) tall. Robert reached the top of the Petronas in 2009. Taipei 101 rises 1,667 feet (508m). That’s 184 feet (56m) taller than the Petronas Towers.

While Robert holds the title of scaling the tallest building in the world—the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (2,716ft/828m)—he was required to use a rope. That makes Honnold’s Taipei 101 ropeless ascent the largest urban free solo in scale by nearly 200 feet.

But Taipei 101 is far from the most challenging urban free solo in history, at least according to Alain Robert’s building scale. Robert says this honor goes to the Framatome in Paris, which he gives a 10 out of 10 on his difficulty scale based on his 1998 ascent. Taipei 101, Robert estimates, is more like a 5.5 or 6 on his urban climbing difficulty scale. Within the Yosemite Decimal System of grading rock routes, Honnold has called it somewhere in the 5.11 range.

Honnold cruised the climb, taking almost exactly as much time he estimated it would take him to scale the tower. “I was basically having a panic attack the entire time,” Honnold’s wife Sanni McCandless declared after he rappelled down the spire to the safety of the observation deck. Throughout the climb, building occupants clustered in the corner that Honnold scaled to snap selfies and cheer him on. He cruised through the 10 dragon features, each measuring 16 feet high, with heel hooks and powerful pinches.

Honnold kept the audience on his toes through the cruxy spire at the top, campusing up concentric rings and at one point going hands-free, as Harrington admitted that he was playing with the emotions of the millions of onsite and Netflix viewers. One major shortfall of the event was indeed the commentary. As the only climber commenting live on Netflix, Harrington, a climbing partner and friend of Honnold’s, had the best insider and expert insights about everything from specific moves to mindset. Yet Elle Duncan (a general sports broadcaster), Seth Rollins (a professional wrestler), and Mark Rober (the YouTuber of CrunchLabs) dominated the conversation.

While Harrington provided valuable answers to the other commentators’ questions, the non-climber commentators delivered left-field, unenlightened comments such as “I think this is a good time to point out the difference between bouldering and buildering” (Rober) and “That’s what we mean by overhanging” or “It’s a lot of thrust” (Duncan). We would have loved to see a more balanced commentary approach that put Harrington and other climbers at the forefront.

In the months and weeks leading up to “Skyscraper Live,” the event drew both excitement and scrutiny across the climbing community and mainstream media. Some placed enormous faith in Honnold’s ability to safely ascend the building without ropes, while others criticized the undue level of risk he took as a husband, father, and public figure.

Another critique centered upon the fact that the event would be broadcast live, potentially resulting in millions witnessing a livestreamed death. This exact horrific phenomenon occurred recently unbeknownst to the late climber Balin Miller this year on El Capitan. Some climbers also held concerns that Honnold serves as an influential role model to young climbers, who might now aspire to accomplish what he did in Taiwan’s capital today.

Yet read any interview or account from Honnold leading up this event, and it’s clear that his calculus was far more simplistic. He’d been giving permission to scale one of the world’s tallest buildings that was well within his athletic limits, so why not take it? Again and again, he asserted that the opportunity was one he couldn’t resist—and a pure fun one at that.

Whatever your impressions were of “Skyscraper Live” before, during, or after the event, Honnold made history on January 24 with his ascent. So will there be a “Skyscraper Live II” or will Honnold finally be satisfied to just “stay at home” and “play with the kids,” as he noted critics have suggested in a recent New York Times interview? If we had to guess, we bet he’d free solo another building tomorrow if given the chance.

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