WASHINGTON POST: Free Solo star Alex Honnold’s Taipei 101 stunt achieved lifelong dream to climb a skyscraper

American superstar climber Alex Honnold successfully climbed Taiwan’s tallest building on Saturday without any assistance or safety net — while being live-streamed to Netflix’s hundreds of millions of international subscribers.

Honnold rose to global prominence in 2017 when he became the first person to climb Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan rock face without ropes, a feat that was chronicled in the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo. But the ascent of Taipei 101 — a 1667-foot (508m) bamboo-inspired building that rises above the city’s skyline and is the 11th largest skyscraper in the world — was his first major man-made challenge.

The hair-raising stunt was the biggest urban free solo climb — a term that refers to climbing without protective equipment.

“It’s an incredible building. … It’s uniquely suited for climbing,” Honnold told Netflix’s magazine, Tudum, in December. He added, “Because it’s really hard to get permission to climb a building and I have permission, I have to take advantage of it and climb the building.”

The barehanded haul up the building’s 101 floors — which are home to offices, diplomatic outposts, coffee shops and a high-end mall — took just under an hour and 32 minutes.

Taipei 101 has been climbed once before — with ropes. As part of its opening celebrations in 2004, climber Alain Robert, often called the “French Spider-Man,” was invited to scale the building, which was then the tallest in the world. The endeavour took four hours, which Robert said was longer than he expected, thanks to an elbow injury and nasty weather.

“I paved the road,” Robert said in an interview. “I am sure he’s going to have a lot of fun, the kind of fun I have had. Now it’s his turn.”

Robert, who has climbed more than 200 skyscrapers across the world, said scaling the Taipei tower was only moderately difficult. (He said the smooth, glassy Areva Tower skyscraper in France, for instance, was much trickier.) And he expressed confidence that Honnold would complete the climb safely.

“It’s not like going and buying your lottery ticket and scratching,” he explained. “No, Alex is relying on his professionalism and his skill and he’ll do it successfully.”

Honnold, who has done some practice climbing on the building, told Tudum that the hardest portion will be the middle. There, eight segments of eight floors each jut out in a steep overhang, before forming a small ledge. These slanted sections are meant to evoke a stalk of bamboo.

Though even the smallest mistake could be fatal, Honnold is hard to rattle. He has spent the days leading up to his life-and-death undertaking strolling around rainy Taipei and getting over jet lag, according to his Instagram.

In an interview with CNN last week, he said that his chance of injury is lower than that of a professional football player during a game. Plus, even if he falls in the middle section, Honnold said, the balconies could catch him and prevent him falling to his death.

“It seems more dramatic because the consequences are so much higher, but the risk, the actual likelihood of having an injury, are, I would say, close to zero,” he said in the interview. “I feel like it’s going to be fine.”

Honnold, 40, is married with two children and lives in Las Vegas.

Taiwanese officials, for their part, worked hard to minimise the risk of the gravity-defying spectacle.

Since beginning discussions with Honnold’s team last year, the government held more than 30 meetings with dozens of departments and over 200 people about the climb, said Jennifer Jao, director of the Taipei Film Commission, who coordinated the effort.

These discussions included ambulance services and traffic control — the building is in the middle of a busy commercial area — as well as weather authorities, who will be measuring the wind speed on the day of the climb, said Jao. In addition, the government assessed the impact of nearby airplane traffic on Honnold and the transmission of the live broadcast.

Taipei 101 has also turned to more spiritual preparations: The building’s leadership held a bilingual blessing ceremony this week, with Honnold in attendance, to pray for a successful event. A spokesperson for the building declined to comment in advance of the climb.

But Taiwan — a self-governing island off the coast of China that Beijing claims as its own — also seems eager to milk the attention from hosting such a high-profile event at its landmark skyscraper.

“This is a very rare opportunity for marketing Taipei, and one that may not come again,” said Jao.

The high-stakes feat has already spawned a flurry of media attention in Taiwan and beyond, while Saturday Night Live parodied Honnold’s climb.

SNL’s Sarah Sherman played Honnold’s wife, who said in the comedic sketch that she was “so proud” of her husband for attempting something “a lot of people wouldn’t, because they want to be around for their family — but not him.”

The chairman of Taipei 101, Janet Chia, posted a video of herself on social media last week screaming, “I love Taiwan” at the very top of the skyscraper — with a helmet and harness. In a caption alongside the video, she encouraged people to “take risks” and “break tradition”.

Jim Lin, a 26-year-old climbing enthusiast who lives in central Taiwan, said that the event is a win-win for Taiwan and the international community. “Taiwan can see a world-class climber” attempt to climb the building, which has become a “symbol” for its capital city, he said, while global viewers get the chance to learn more about the small island.

“The respect goes both ways,” he added.

Rudy Lu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.