Alex Honnold achieved another historic feat. On 25 January, the American rock climber climbed the Taipei 101 skyscraper without using ropes or any safety net. Taipei 101, one of the tallest buildings in the world, stands 1,667 feet tall.
The climb was broadcast live, with multiple media channels covering the event and offering expert commentary. According to Honnold, climbing a skyscraper is very different from scaling natural rock faces.
Buildings have sharper edges, repetitive structures and fewer natural rests. He added that he had dreamed of climbing a skyscraper for nearly 10 years.
Honnold is famous for his 2017 free solo climb of the 3,000-foot El Capitan. While others have climbed Taipei 101 before, Honnold is the first known person to complete the ascent without ropes or safety support.
Urban climber Alain Robert, known as the French Spiderman, climbed the building in 2004 using ropes and a safety belt. He took 4 hours to achieve the feat.
Alex Honnold completed his free solo climb of Taipei 101 in one hour and 32 minutes, just two minutes slower than his own estimate. The climb was live-streamed by Netflix and drew huge crowds watching from the streets below.
After finishing the ascent, Honnold was welcomed on a balcony by his wife, Sanni McCandless.
“I thought I was going pretty slow,” CNN quoted Alex Honnold as saying.
“No, you were fast. I was basically having a panic attack the entire time,” his wife replied.
How much is Alex Honnold getting paid to climb Taipei 101?
According to The New York Times, Alex Honnold was reportedly paid a mid-six-figure amount, estimated at around $500,000 ( ₹4.5 crore), for his live free solo climb of Taipei 101. The payment was linked to the live Netflix broadcast rather than the climb itself.
Honnold described the amount as “embarrassingly small” when compared to salaries in major professional sports. According to him, top players in the Major League Baseball earn contracts worth over $170 million ( ₹1,557 crore).
He also clarified that he would have attempted the climb even without payment. The money was for the “spectacle” and global broadcast, he said. Honnold added that the final figure was lower than what his agent had initially hoped to negotiate.
“If there wasn’t the whole spectacle around it, and I just had the opportunity to go do it by myself, I’d be fine with that. I would do that,” he told the publication before the climb.
“But, in this case, there is a spectacle. I’m not getting paid to climb the building. I’m getting paid for the spectacle. I’m climbing the building for free,” he said.
“It’s less than my agent aspired to,” he added.
Alex Honnold on risks of death
Alex Honnold earlier said he might not die even if he fell during the climb.
“If something happens, I would die, though actually, on this particular building, that’s not even totally true because there are balconies every few floors,” he earlier told CNN.
“The geometry of the building, the shape of the building is such that you actually could fall in tons of places and not actually die, which makes it in some ways safer than a lot of rock-climbing objectives,” he said.
