Taipei 101 climber Alex Honnold on finding joy beyond fear after latest feat

LOS ANGELES – In front of a live audience, American rock climber Alex Honnold

completed the first ropeless ascent

of the 508m-tall Taipei 101, Taiwan’s tallest skyscraper, on Jan 25. One wrong move would have almost certainly resulted in grave injury or instant death.

But for the 40-year-old, 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 documentary film Free Solo (2018) – it was just another climb.

Speaking with Reuters from Los Angeles a week after Netflix’s Skyscraper Live broadcast, 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.

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

A: 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, 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 surprised by the number of people down on the ground. Seeing all those spectators live was an experience for me. But in general, it is the whole experience surrounding the climb and not so much the climb itself that I remember.

I remember I was very struck by the weather. It was just so perfect that day. All the other days were socked in and rainy, and then that day was perfect, blue, crisp and beautiful. And it made the whole thing feel way better.

Q: The decision to postpone the climb because of the weather was reminiscent of a similar call you made in Free Solo to turn back early in a free solo attempt. How did you weigh the decision given the expectations around the live broadcast?

A: Obviously, rain on steel and glass is going to be really slippery. We were kind of like, “Well how slippery is it? Maybe it’s okay.” But then one of the prep days, it was raining and I tried to climb and it was impossible.

But in a way, it was helpful because it gave a very clear answer. There wasn’t a grey area where maybe if it is only raining a little bit, it is okay. It was out of the question. That simplified the decision-making and made it easier.

Q: Skyscraper Live attracted 6.2 million viewers, according to Netflix. Whose idea was it to broadcast the climb in real time? Did the presence of a live audience change how you prepared for or experienced it?

A: This whole project had almost come together in 2013 for a different live TV event that had never quite materialised.

The idea of climbing a skyscraper had always been this live climbing event because if you are going to do a live free soloing event, it is almost better on a building because it is really hard to do live things in the wilderness. There is no service, there is no fibre lines and all that kind of stuff.

To me, it doesn’t make any difference whether it is live or not because the actual experience of climbing the building is the same whether people watch it two months from now or if they watch it live in the moment.

In a lot of ways, it is actually better live because normally when you do a climbing documentary, you do the climb and then you go back, and you film close-ups and tights and take pictures. You do all this other work afterwards.

With a live event, you just do the climb and then you go home. It is way better, it is easier, it is faster. But the actual experience for me is basically the same where I am climbing on a wall with my friends next to me filming.

Q: Do you see live, high-stakes ascents becoming a bigger part of climbing culture? Would you take on something like this again?

A: I had a great time. I would totally do something like this again if given the opportunity or if somebody asked me to. That said, I really doubt that this will become a bigger part of climbing culture – partially because climbing is typically in the remote outdoors.

In the 1980s and 1990s, a couple of different climbers did things like this – even on buildings and various sorts of climbing spectacles. So, I don’t think it’s unprecedented, but I doubt it is going to be the next big thing. I think it is just a cool thing that happens every decade or two.

Q: Watching Free Solo and Skyscraper Live, you realise just how easy it is for viewers to fixate on their own fears of the risk that you are taking on rather than necessarily focusing on the craft and joy of climbing. Do you feel that shapes how people relate to your work?

A: Totally. A big part of the whole experience around skyscrapers is that it is so far removed from people’s normal experience. Like, it is normal to watch an elite performer do the thing they have trained their whole life for. And yet, for whatever reason, nobody ever sees that in climbing. So, they are like, “That’s crazy. Why would you do that?”

And you are kind of like, well, dude, you watch boxing every weekend. It is the same thing where someone who has trained their whole life is doing something that kind of seems hardcore if you don’t know much about it.

Or like, football. If you never knew anything about it, you’d be like, “Oh my god, that poor guy just got hit so hard. That’s insane.”

Q: What is at the top of your climbing bucket list?

A: I have tons of things that I would like to climb personally. I actually have a separate bucket list of places that I want to go with my family once the kids are just a little bit older because, right now, I have two small girls (aged two and four).

Once they are a few years older and can remember things and are slightly less challenging to travel with, there are a lot of places that I’d love to take them.

There is a lot of climbing in South-east Asia that I have never climbed in that I think would be an amazing family experience and a great opportunity for the kids to see a totally different part of the world.

And so now I have this bucket list of climbing destinations where I want to travel with the family and then specific climbs that I would like to do as an individual just to do something that challenges me. But none of them are that important, you know? None of them really matter. They just matter to me because I want to challenge myself.

Q: You have spoken before about how your approach has evolved as you got older. At 40, how do you think about longevity in free soloing – and what does sustainable risk look like for you now?

A: I suspect that I will lose the fire for it at some point. I just won’t want to push that hard.

There is a huge spectrum between easy free soloing and cutting-edge free soloing. Easy free soloing is sort of like scrambling mountain ridges and just climbing easy routes, and I am sure I will be doing that deep into old age.

But I doubt that I will be trying elite, cutting-edge free solos forever. Already, I have lost a little bit of the fire just because I have been touring around western North America for 20 years as a professional climber and I have done most of the things that I am really excited about. So, there’s just a little bit less inspiration for that kind of stuff.

Q: Beyond the risk and the stakes, what part of these climbs feels the most meaningful to you?

A: It is pretty fun. Questions are always centred on risk and consequences and the extremeness of it. And that makes sense. But it is also tremendously fun to climb up the side of a building.

In some ways, it is like the little kid in me gets to live his dream. You spend your life as a little kid looking up at things and being like, “That would be so amazing.” And then to actually get to do some of that as an adult, that is so cool.

I think there is some real joy there that sometimes gets overlooked with all the extreme, life or death, whatever. When you put all that aside, it is so cool. REUTERS