BURSTOn Friday, January 23 Alex Honnold will embark on another high-profile free solo. This time, the objective will be the Taipei 101, and the climb will be live-streamed. The skyscraper is 508 meters tall, consisting of 101 floors. When it opened in 2004, it was the tallest building in the world. It now ranks 11th, but remains an impressive, striking feature of Taipei, Taiwan
Honnold’s ascent will be a two-hour special that will be live-streamed on Netflix. The program is called Skyscraper Live, and it will air at 5 pm Pacific Time / 8 pm Eastern Time.
There will be five hosts: Netflix Sports lead on-air host Elle Duncan (formerly SportsCentre anchor with ESPN), professional rock climber Emily Harrington, former NASA engineer and YouTube sensation Mark Rober, WWE superstar Seth Rollins, and veteran climbing commentator Pete Woods.
Honnold’s interest in climbing the Taipei 101 dates back to 2012, well before his free solo of Freerider on El Cap and the release of “Free Solo”. He originally planned to solo the building in late 2013, but the date was pushed to 2014, and then ultimately never happened, until now, of course. You can learn more about these early Taipei 101 free solo plans here.
Taipei 101 is an interesting building from a climbing perspective. It starts with around 70 metres of “slab” up the building’s podium. The next part of the skyscraper is composed of a stack of eight eight-story sections. Each of these sections is slightly overhanging. Each section ends on a big ledge where the next overhanging section begins, with the entire building resembling a tiered pagoda or a stalk of bamboo.
Based on video footage of Honnold top-rope soloing the Taipei 101 for practice, it appears he’ll be climbing up one of the four aretes. To complete the climb, he’ll have to ascend hundreds of metres of slightly overhanging terrain, but he’ll get a rest every eight stories.
If you’re new to climbing, Honnold is one of the most accomplished trad climbers ever, with dozens of awe-inspiring free-solos, alpine first ascents, and hard trad climbs. In 2017, he free-soloed Freerider 5.13a on El Capitan, the first ever person to free-solo the gigantic Yosemite monolith. The feat was documented in the Academy Award-winning film Free Solo. To read more about some of Honnold’s biggest solos, visit here.
Alex Honnold TR Soloing Taipei 101
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