Posted on 01/25/2026 11:31:36 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — American rock climber Alex Honnold ascended the Taipei 101 skyscraper on Sunday without any ropes or protective equipment.
Cheers erupted from a street-level crowd as he reached the top of the spire of the 508-meter (1,667-foot) tower about 90 minutes after he started. Wearing a red short-sleeve shirt, Honnold waved his arms back and forth over his head.
“It was like what a view, it’s incredible, what a beautiful day,” he said afterward. “It was very windy, so I was like, don’t fall off the spire. I was trying to balance nicely. But it was, what an incredible position, what a beautiful way to see Taipei.”
Rock climber Alex Honnold raises his fist atop the Taipei 101 skyscraper on Sunday. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
Honnold, known for his ropeless ascent up Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan, climbed up one corner of Taipei 101 using small L-shaped outcroppings as footholds. Periodically, he had to maneuver around and clamber up the sides of large ornamental structures that jut out from the tower, pulling himself up with his bare hands.
The building has 101 floors, with the hardest part being the 64 floors of the middle section — the “bamboo boxes” that give the building its signature look. Divided into eight, each segment has eight floors of steep, overhanging climbing followed by balconies, where he took short rests as he made his way upward.
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Climbing up is the ‘easy’ part. I want to see him climb back down!
I can’t even watch the video.
People like this are in a totally different mindset. Pretty sure he knows gravity is the great equalizer but he walls off the risk/danger and carries on.
Probably terrified of stepping on sidewalk cracks, however.
“I wonder how he feels about spelunking?”
Rock climbing is a totally different thing than caving(we don’t call it “spelunking”).
That was the point of the question, he is fearless of heights, how about subterranean claustrophobia.
I was born largely free of fear, not entirely like the medical condition, but things that bother other people don’t bother me, car wrecks, house fires, getting shot at, knives pulled, attempted muggings, going anywhere at anytime alone, biker bars, black bars, inner city black night clubs, associating with murderers as friends, dangerous work situations, dangerous has always felt good, not scary.
Honnold has done the most difficult and dangerous thing any rock climber has ever accomplished: He free-climbed Yosemite’s El Capitan.
He didn’t just get out of bed one morning and decide to do it, he praciced climbing it roped-up and with assitance, taking each ‘pitch’ by itself, rehearsing the lowest-risk way to do it, and memorizing the route. He spent years preparing and months of actual time on the rock selecting and memorizing the route.
Climbing a skyscraper where every floor is the same was child’s play to him.
They’ve MRI’d his head. His amygdala doesn’t work. The amygdala recognizes what’s a threat and compels us to react. And his literally doesn’t work. It shows up on the MRI as a blank spot. Literally NO activity. So he can be purely analytical about what he does.
He also recognizes that just about everybody that does what he does eventually dies. He has slowed down on the real hard stuff since he got married and had a daughter. INHO he is simply the best there is, but also not a fool.
For anyone who has never seen him work, here is a good short video of his work https://youtu.be/tnRoda7Ke2w?si=yEp03U-8saLquGob
Interesting - thanks!
Pics or it never happened.
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