![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/www.climbing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/alex-honnold-skyscraper-live.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nAfter a 24-hour rain delay, the 40-year-old free soloist made easy work of the 1,667ft skyscraper in one hour and 31 minutes. \n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Photo: Courtesy Netflix)<\/p>\n
Updated January 24, 2026 10:10PM<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t willing to take.<\/p>\n
After 24 hours of 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<\/p>\n
The climb took Honnold approximately one hour and 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. Emily Harrington provided live commentary during the Netflix special.<\/p>\n
Honnold\u2019s climb represents the tallest urban free solo in history. The highest building that Alain Robert\u2014the unequivocal leader in urban free soloing\u2014has scaled was one of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which stand 1,483ft (452m) tall<\/a>. Robert reached the top of the Petronas in 2009. Taipei 101 rises 1,667 feet (508m). That\u2019s 184 feet (56m) taller than the Petronas Towers.<\/p>\n While Robert holds the title of scaling the tallest building in the world\u2014the Burj Khalifa<\/a> in Dubai (2,716ft\/828m)\u2014he was required to use a rope. That makes Honnold\u2019s Taipei 101 ropeless ascent the largest urban free solo in scale by nearly 200 feet.<\/p>\n But Taipei 101 is far from the most challenging urban free solo in history, at least according to Alain Robert\u2019s 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<\/a>. Within the Yosemite Decimal System of grading rock routes, Honnold has called it<\/a> somewhere in the 5.11 range.<\/p>\n Honnold cruised the climb, almost exactly to the time he estimated it would take him to scale the tower. \u201cI was basically having a panic attack the entire time,\u201d Honnold\u2019s wife Sanni McCandless declared after he rappelled down the spire to the observation deck. Throughout the climb, building occupants clustered in the corner that Honnold scaled to snap selfies and cheer him on, as he cruised through the 10 dragon features measuring 16 feet high with heel hooks and powerful pinches.<\/p>\n Honnold kept the audience on his toes through the cruxy spire at the top, campusing up concentric rings as commentator Emily Harrington admitted that he was playing with the emotions of the millions of onsite and Netflix viewers. One major shortfall of the event was the commentary. As the only climber commenting live on Netflix, Harrington 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.<\/p>\n While Harrington provided valuable answers to their questions, the non-climber commentators delivered gumby-esque<\/a> comments such as \u201cI think this is a good time to point out the difference between bouldering and buildering\u201d (Rober) and \u201cThat\u2019s what we mean by overhanging\u201d (Duncan). We would have loved to see a more balanced commentary approach that put Harrington and other climbers at the forefront.<\/p>\n In the months and weeks leading up to \u201cSkyscraper Live,\u201d the event drew both excitement and scrutiny across the climbing community and mainstream media. Some placed enormous faith in Honnold\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> 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\u2019s capital today.<\/p>\n Yet read any interview or account from Honnold leading up this event, and it\u2019s clear that his calculus was far more simplistic. He\u2019d been giving permission to scale one of the world\u2019s tallest buildings, so why not take it? Again and again, he asserted that the opportunity was one he couldn\u2019t resist\u2014and a pure fun one at that.<\/p>\n Whatever your impressions were of \u201cSkyscraper Live\u201d before, during, or after the event, Honnold made history on January 24 with his ascent. So will there be a \u201cSkyscraper Live II\u201d or will he finally be satisfied to just \u201cstay at home\u201d and \u201cplay with the kids,\u201d as he noted critics have suggested in a recent New York Times interview?<\/a>\u00a0If we had to guess, we bet he\u2019d free solo another building tomorrow if given the chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a 24-hour rain delay, the 40-year-old free soloist made easy work of the 1,667ft skyscraper in one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,62140,179744,179745,41,39,42,40,54267],"class_list":{"0":"post-431672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-parent_category-news","11":"tag-tag-alex-honnold","12":"tag-tag-free-solo","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories","17":"tag-type-article"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}