What does a normal person do on a Saturday?
Alex Honnold climbs a 508-metre skyscraper. Without a rope. Without a harness. And without blinking.
The American climber has pulled off another jaw-dropping feat, free-soloing Taipei 101 — a steel-and-glass giant designed to look like a bamboo stalk.
It is tall enough to make even seasoned climbers pause.
The ascent was delayed by rain, but once the weather cleared, Honnold went up. Straight up.
The climb, streamed live on Netflix (with a built-in delay, just in case), took him one hour and 31 minutes.
At the top, his reaction was classic Honnold: one word. “Sick.”
Honnold Redefines Limits
For context, the only other person to scale the tower was French climber Alain Robert — aka “Spiderman”.
He took four hours and used ropes and a harness. Honnold? None of that.
“This guy rewrites what we think is possible,” one climbing expert has said of Honnold’s career.
It famously includes being the first person to free-solo Yosemite’s El Capitan, a 915-metre granite wall.
Even distractions couldn’t shake him. Fans waved from inside the building at the 89th floor.
His wife worried about wind and heat. He kept moving.
As Taiwan’s vice president joked online, many of us felt “sick” just watching. Maybe that’s the point.
