Alex Honnold’s Free Solo Attempt Postponed: Safety Concerns Delay Climb

The 2018 documentary Free Solo followed Honnold as he became the first person to ever free solo climb a route on El Capitan, in California’s Yosemite National Park.

Here’s the trailer for the nail-biting, Oscar-winning film:

US climber Alex Honnold is gearing up for his harness-free ascent of the outside of Taiwan’s Taipei 101 skyscraper, one of the world’s tallest buildings. The climb has been organised by Netflix for live broadcast.

Honnold has detailed his motivation to ascend Taipei 101 and said it comes from a long-standing curiosity about “what it would feel like to climb a building this big.”

“Buildings are steeper than rock faces. Most rock faces aren’t actually vertical. Or, they’re not vertical the whole way, [like] the building is,” he told Netflix’s Tudum, explaining that he is drawn to the idea of tackling something made by humans.

The climber says his new endeavour is “cool” and “exciting” and that when the ascent unfolds live, he is asking his viewers to focus on what’s behind it — not just what’s happening onscreen.

“Viewers should appreciate the effort, practice, and training that goes into it. It’s not just willy-nilly. … There’s a plan, and I’m executing [it],” he said.

It is well-known by now that Alex Honnold has set up a mammoth challenge for himself to climb onto the side of Taipei 101 and the world will be able to watch it live.

But climbing the 1,667 ft high building is unreal in its own ways, the climber says that it is not a single dangerous move but “what builds it slowly, floor by floor”.

Taipei 101, he says, is characterised by its architectural feature called “bamboo boxers”, whose overhang will complicate the climb for him.

The eight distinctive boxes are stacked on one top of another in pagodalike modules designed to mimic bamboo stalks.

“Each one is eight floors,” Honnold told Netflix’s Tudum. “There’s a balcony every eight floors, so in a lot of ways it feels like a climbing pitch, which is the way most climbers differentiate [the] segments of a climb. This means hard effort for almost 100 feet, then there’s a balcony. Hard effort for almost 100 feet, then [another] balcony. In a lot of ways, that’s what rock climbing feels like. Climb for a certain rope length, then stop,” he says.

Speaking prior to the decision to delay Honnold’s climb, James Smith of production company Plimsoll Productions told Variety that the show could be postponed by one or two days if the building is too wet to climb.

“Our main contingency planning is we can delay the broadcast by maybe an hour, maybe slightly longer,” said Smith.

“If there’s been a light shower and the building’s drying off, the temperature here is pretty good, there’s often a light breeze, so the building will dry relatively quickly.

“If it is deemed too wet, if there’s too much moisture on the building, we will probably delay to the next day, which would be a Saturday night transmission in the U.S. We could even delay another day if we needed to.

“Obviously Alex has to be 100% comfortable and happy in himself and in the conditions. And then our safety team likewise have to.”

Not everyone is impressed by Honnold’s plans to climb Taipei 101.

Dan Goodwin climbed Toronto’s CN Tower in 1986 as a free solo without any prior planning or preparation.

Now 70, he told the Wall Street Journal that Honnold’s Netflix live event is “a well-rehearsed, choreographed film production and nothing more.”

He also argued that it is ignoble that Honnold will ride an elevator back down after climbing, rather than rappelling down the building as he did on the CN Tower.

He added that Taipei 101 would be comparatively easy to climb, saying: “I could climb that building, and if I was going to climb that building, I would probably have upped the ante. I probably would have blindfolded myself.”

You may know Alex Honnold from the sensational documentary Free Solo, where the climber completes a lifelong dream to scale the famous El Capitan in Yosemite, California.

“Taipei 101, as part of its opening ceremony, was climbed by a French climber named Alain Robert with ropes, and he climbed it over four hours — he had just broken his arm or something crazy,” Honnold remarked when launching this challenge, confirming he will be the first to scale the building free solo. “He was a great climber in his time; he’s really a skilled soloist, and he’s climbed a lot of buildings around the world.”

He added that he believes successfully reaching the top will establish the climb as “the biggest urban free solo ever.”

There has been significant debate over how Netflix will react should the worst happen during Honnold’s rescheduled attempt to scale Taipei 101.

Netflix unscripted series VP Jeff Gaspin told Variety: “It’s obviously a conversation that everybody has.”

He added: “You can imagine what we’ll do. It’s nothing momentous. We’ll cut away. We have a 10-second delay. Nobody expects or wants to see anything like that to happen. But we will cut away, and it’s as simple as that.”

Rain or not, how much money would it take to convince you to climb a skyscraper without safety equipment?

Alex Honnold would have done it for free, which seems to have put him at a disadvantage when negotiating with Netflix.

More details of his “embarassingly small” pay day here:

In a video message posted on X, Honnold appears in front of a rain-soaked window and acknowledges “climbing is always at the mercy of nature.”

He captioned the video: “Sadly it’s raining in Taipei right now so I don’t get to go climbing today. But I’ve been really touched by all the support and well wishes from folks – hopefully the weather improves and I get an opportunity to climb the beautiful Taipei 101. Fingers crossed! Same time tomorrow on Netflix.”

While Honnold’s climb has been delayed by the weather conditions, there’s no chance the climber will be reconsidering his decision to scale Taipei 101.

Asked earlier this week by The New York Times what he hopes viewers will take away from watching his daredevil feat, Honnold responded: “When there were some announcements about climbing the building, there was some criticism in the climbing world of like, Oh, you know, that’s stupid, that’s a stunt. But my hope is that people watching it will at least see the joy in it.

“Like when you’re a kid and look around and think, It’d be amazing to climb up there. As an adult, that gets hammered out of you. ‘Why would you do that? That’s dangerous. Do you have insurance?’ You know, all that type of stuff. But there’s something to be said for maintaining that childlike joy of just looking at it, like, That is amazing. I want to do that.”