Friday, January 30, 2026
Alex Honnold Skyscraper Climb on Netflix: What Happens if He Falls?
variety.com: Later today (well, tomorrow in Taiwan), “Free Solo” climber Alex Honnold will start his ascent on the 1,677-foot Taipei 101 skyscraper — without ropes — by carefully making his way up the tower’s slab base. But that’s the easy part. From there, he’ll get on the building’s middle section, designed like eight-story “bamboo boxes,” which will require steep climbing over these overhanging sections.
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As someone who's been a rock climber for over a decade, I have many opinions on Alex Honnold. Free Solo came out when I was about 12 years old, and at the time, I have vivid memories of absolutely despising it. Free soloing is not a thing that is super popular in the climbing community, infact most people view it as quite dumb. So when I would tell people I rock climbed and they would say “oh have you seen free solo?” it can be upsetting that people think that’s all the sport is. My experience with climbing is mostly indoor, in the competitive world, but I have done some outdoor climbing as well, and there, you cannot play around with safety. At 15 I was at a camp in Acadia and one of my guides messed up her safety measures and went off the end of a rope while rappelling falling 15 feet. She ended up being okay, but we had to get her medivaced out, and she was quite injured but lucky she didn't get more hurt. Free soloing is taking on a million more times the risks, just for the sake of it, and the consequences are very real.
I remember watching Free Solo and thinking “wow, what an absolute freak of nature.” I remember something in that document talking about how abnormal his fear receptors are. And I do honestly think that his achievement in Free Solo (soloing El Cap) was harder (as I’ve seen climbing experts say online repeatedly in response to climbing Taipei 101), but you still really have to be a different kind of person to live broadcast an incredibly difficult free climb to the world. It was really interesting to hear about this from the streaming/entertainment point of view, though. The part about it being sort of like a play resonated with me as a theatre maker. When hearing all about Skyscraper Live on social media, I didn’t really think about all the insane behind the scenes that would be happening. But so much is dependant on the weather, on the timeframe, and on Holland himself.
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