Why Taipei 101 climber Alex Honnold loves free soloing buildings and what he’s eyeing next

In front of a live audience, rock climber Alex Honnold completed the first ropeless ascent of Taipei 101, Taiwan’s tallest skyscraper. One wrong move would have almost certainly resulted in grave injury or death.

But for Honnold, whose decades-long career includes scaling some of the world’s tallest heights – including his ropeless ascent of Yosemite’s El Capitan in the Oscar-winning film Free Solo – it was just another climb.

Speaking from Los Angeles a week after the release of Netflix’s Skyscraper Live, which documented the Taipei 101 ascent, Honnold reflects on the pressures of performing for a live audience, climbing’s rising standards, and how long ‌he plans to keep pushing the limits of what is possible.

You recently ascended Taipei 101 without safety gear in one hour and 31 minutes. A week on, what has stayed with you most about the experience?

I need more time, more perspective. In a way – and this is sort of classic of all climbing experiences – I remember ‍all the prep, all the time with my friends ahead of time, being up on the wall, the scouting, the stress around the weather, basically the whole expedition component of it.

The actual 90 minutes or so that I was on the wall climbing, I don’t totally – I mean, I remember that a bit. I remember appreciating the view and being really surprised by the number of people down on the ground. Seeing all those spectators live was an experience for me. But in general, it’s the whole experience surrounding the climb and not so much the climb itself that I remember.