Alex Honnold Free-Solos Taipei 101 In Record Time

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Alex Honnold climbed the Taipei 101 skyscraper without a rope (Credit: Netflix.com)

American rock climber Alex Honnold made history on January 25, 2026, by completing the first rope-free climb of Taipei 101 in Taiwan. The 1,667-foot (508 m) skyscraper is located in downtown Taipei. It was the world’s tallest until it was surpassed by Dubai’s Burj Khalifa in 2010.

The hair-raising stunt was streamed live on Netflix as part of Skyscraper Live. It was the highest free solo climb of an urban structure. Free solo means climbing without ropes, harnesses, or any protective gear.

Honnold began his ascent at 9:17 am local time on Sunday. Wearing a red short-sleeve shirt and yellow climbing shoes, the 40-year-old scaled the building’s southeast corner. Throughout the climb, he frequently smiled and waved at fans watching from behind the glass. Speaking to viewers via a live microphone, Honnold described the incredible views and the excitement of the crowd gathered to witness the historic climb.

The tower's middle sections were the most challenging (Credit: Netflix.com)

Though he appeared calm, the climb was far from easy. The most grueling portion involved the "bamboo boxes" — 64 floors in the middle section of the tower. The floors are divided into eight segments, each flaring outward to form overhanging ledges. These require intense upper-body strength and careful footwork to navigate.

Honnold also had to maneuver around large ornamental steel features that jut out from the tower. To make matters worse, some surfaces were coated with residue from New Year’s Eve fireworks, making them especially slippery. As he reached the tower's needle-thin spire, he faced a different challenge — powerful winds! Honnold had to move very slowly to maintain his balance.

"It was very windy,” he later said. “I was like, don’t fall off the spire. But it was an incredible position. What a beautiful way to see Taipei."

Honnold made it to the top in about an hour and a half (Credit: Netflix.com)

Despite the obstacles, Honnold reached the top in just 1 hour and 31 minutes. That is about twice as fast as Alain Robert, the only other person to summit the skyscraper. The French climber did it using ropes in 2004. Honnold celebrated his feat by taking a selfie and simply saying, "Sick." He then put on a safety harness and descended several floors to a waiting platform to hug his wife, Sanni McCandless. She later admitted she had a "panic attack the entire time" while watching.

This is not Honnold’s first headline-making climb. On June 3, 2017, he became first person to scale El Capitan — a nearly 3,000-foot (914 m) tall vertical rock face in California's Yosemite National Park — without ropes. The intense 3-hour and 56-minute ascent was featured in the 2019 Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo.

Resources: Netflix.com, People.com, Hollywoodreporter.com, NBCnews.com

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