How Alex Honnold Is Preparing to Free Solo Taipei 101

Imagine a freestanding 1,667-foot tower. Limited access and no protection have made it nearly impossible to climb. Now picture this: You’ve been granted permission to climb it, but you’ll be paid to do so. For many climbers, this would be a dream come true. For world-famous free soloist Alex Honnold, a rope-less ascent of Taiwan’s Taipei 101 will soon be a reality.

In the coming days, the 40-year old husband and father of two will travel from his Las Vegas home to Taiwan to free solo the tower on January 23 while Netflix livestreams his ascent. Before he takes off, Honnold and I have been sport climbing at the Clear Light Cave, a limestone crag near his home, and talking about his upcoming solo.

Taipei 101: Beta breakdown 

“It’s two easy moves and then a hard move,” Honnold tells me of the climb, which will take approximately 90 minutes.

Taipei 101 begins with 300 feet of less-than-vertical terrain containing a shopping mall and gym. On the 26th floor, large ancient coins adorn the exterior, marking the change to slightly overhanging terrain: Eight steep sections of eight floors each.

Honnold will grab sidepulls, which stay drier and cleaner compared to edges on buildings. Two high steps will lead to waist-high ledges. The crux move involves smearing his foot to reach a neck-high foothold.

Due to the repetitive construction of the building, Honnold will perform this same sequence approximately 92 times, doing it around 20 times on the less-than-vertical beginning, then 72 times on the upper steep section. All of this repetition will transform him into a vertical swimmer, wherein his shoulders, hips, and knees turn in as he becomes more efficient with the movement.

One definitive crux does exist on the route. He will need to make a large move off a security camera “jug” to reach a flat edge. But the majority of the climbing will be homogenous—easy, easy, hard.

As he scales the building, Honnold will climb past low-zone offices, including the Taiwan Stock Exchange. At the 35th story, he’ll reach the mid-zone offices, including the French Office in Taipei and a Bank of America. At the 59th story, he’ll reach the Skylobby, where there is an elevator exchange. Above that, the stories hold high-zone offices, which include BNP Paribas, a French bank, and a French life insurance company. He’ll also climb past 15 floors of mechanical sections before reaching two floors of coffee shops. Finally, he will gain the observation deck on the 91st floor.

Above the observation deck, Taipei 101’s last 10 stories await. If he falls on this section, he will land on the observation deck instead of all the way to the ground. This top section of the building to the summit tower holds slightly different terrain, but much of it is the same as sections below. When French climber Alain Robert climbed the building on toprope in 2004, he jumared—ascended the rope using a specialized device—a short section near the summit. Since Robert’s ascent, an exterior ladder has been integrated to make it easier.

After a few final mechanical stories, Honnold will summit on a small spire, just big enough to stand on. He’ll then downclimb a few stories, and head back to the ground via a high-speed elevator.

Of the difficulty, Honnold related it to a classic Yosemite crack climb: “It’s like doing the Rostrum (5.11c) twice in a row.”

Conditions and gear for Honnold’s live free solo  

Honnold intends to climb the southeast corner of Taipei 101, which means early morning sun and a quick-drying aspect. With the climb scheduled to start streaming on Netflix at 8 p.m. Eastern Time in the U.S., in Taipei, Honnold will pull onto the building in the morning, around 9 a.m. Taiwan Standard Time. If light precipitation occurs, the sidepulls will likely stay dry, but hopefully there won’t be weather. The show runners have worked a rain delay into the event, however.

This late January ascent will come at the tail end of the driest part of the year. Average highs come in around 65 degrees Fahrenheit and lows hover around 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Conditions should be better for climbing than they are in September, when Honnold scoped the route in hot and humid conditions. On that trip, he assessed the feasibility of an ascent and whether he was willing to risk his life to climb the building.

Besides a simple chalkbag, headphones to listen to his Tool soundtrack, shorts, and a t-shirt, Honnold will wear custom La Sportiva climbing shoes that the Italian company designed just for his ascent. He will either wear an all-yellow pair of La Sportiva TC Pros with a yellow rubber that’s softer and better equipped for climbing on glass and buildings, or a pair of softer Skwamas.

The softer rubber of these shoes will certainly help his feet grip slippery features, but a psychological factor also exists. When Honnold is 1,200 feet up the tower and growing tired, he can look down at his custom footwear for a confidence boost.

“It feels like you’re doing everything you can,” Honnold explains about wearing specialty shoes. He’d worn this softer rubber while soloing once before during a film shoot on Sendero Luminoso (5.12d) in Potrero Chico, Mexico, as well as when he first checked out Taipei 101 about a dozen years ago.

Fruit, plastic, and a cave: Honnold’s Taipei 101 training plan 

Beyond the logistics of knowing the line and having the gear, Honnold has been busy making other preparations. He continues to amass an extensive resume of free solos, with highlights including difficult highballs like Too Big to Flail (V10/5.13d), an onsight free solo of Heaven (5.12d) in Yosemite, and solos of big wall routes like the Regular Northwest Face (5.12) on Half Dome, Moonlight Buttress (5.12) in Zion, and Les Rivieres Pourpres (5.12) in Morocco’s Taghia Gorge.

Of course, he’s climbed nearly countless other routes across the world, including Free Rider (5.13a) on El Capitan, which Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi made into the National Geographic film Free Solo.

Given his resume, climbing this building should be well within his wheelhouse. But since he hasn’t free soloed many buildings—and none so tall—he’s been training specifically for the objective.

Honnold’s physical plan for the tower is simple. Skip dessert for six to eight weeks. Train hard in his home gym. Get blasted at Nevada’s Clear Light Cave. And tick off some of the obscure 5.13s he hasn’t done yet in Red Rock.

Since swapping chocolate for fruit and avoiding holiday sweets, Honnold has been training for the 6mm edges he will encounter on Taipei 101 at home. He’s been campusing 1-5-7 on his home campus board, then making concentrated efforts on his adjustable Tension Board 2 with a mirror layout. After sending the last classic V7s on his board, he’s been whittling away at a list of V9s at 40 degrees, sending V10s at 45 degrees, and finishing with sets of V6 4x4s. Translation for those who don’t speak boards and training: He’s been crushing plastic.

But he’s also mixing it up with outdoor projects.

On December 21, Honnold charged 30 minutes up the hill to the Clear Light Cave on Mount Potosi in Las Vegas. The enormous limestone cave serves as Honnold’s backyard training ground. On that Sunday, he completed the third ascent of Bachelor Party, French climber Francois Legrand’s 2002 5.14d after years of effort.

Bachelor Party begins on the 35-foot route Ray of Light (5.13a). At the anchor, Honnold flipped into an upside-down double kneebar and pulled off his shirt. Then he launched into a series of monos (i.e., one-finger holds) and dynamic throws. Unsurprisingly, he downgraded the route to 5.14c/8c+ because he used different beta and more kneebars.

Downgrading is a typical Honnold practice. This is because he doesn’t believe in his own technical prowess—and he was unable to make Bachelor Party an 8a on Darth Grader. His frequent partner, Tommy Caldwell, even called out his notorious self-sandbagging on the Bachelor Party Instagram post. “That’s so funny you say it’s only 8c+,” wrote Caldwell. “It so much harder than both the supposed 9a’s Sonnie and I did. Maybe 9a in the 90’s without knee bars. But the grading scale has slid. So now pretty much anyone except you would call it 9a with knee bars.”

As soon as he redpointed his mega project, Honnold lowered, rested for a bit, and started up Jonathan Siegrist’s All You Can Eat (5.15a), which he will likely downgrade to 9a.

Honnold mistakenly believes he can’t climb that hard. The route begins on the 50-foot classic Reverse Polarity (5.14b), climbs a bit of different terrain, and ends on the crux finish of Bachelor Party. With his current level of fitness, which is better than it’s ever been, he may finish All You Can Eat before he devours Taiwan’s dumplings.

Beyond his physical preparation, Honnold has also been mentally preparing for the ascent with some adventure soloing. Climbing ropeless in Red Rock tends to be challenging because the harder routes often involve crimping on friable sandstone. This makes them excessively dangerous. And the easier routes are simply too moderate to interest him.

Earlier in December, however, he did find an engaging challenge: free soloing four routes on Mount Wilson in a day, totaling nearly 4,000 feet of terrain: Ini Watana (5.10c), Warrior (5.11a), Gift of the Wind Gods (5.10c), and Wily’s Wild Ride (5.10+).

When he reached the last 5.10 pitch—a shimmy up an eight-inch crack—he got stuck. He had to downclimb and pull off his small backpack to squirm through the section, reaching the top shortly before sunset.

Most would certainly consider this link-up more adventurous than Taipei 101—longer and wilder.

A free soloist’s Taiwan itinerary 

In January, Honnold will head to Taiwan nine days before his live televised ascent. While the production team navigates the logistics of taking elevators, then stairs, then hatches to hang on different sides of the building, he will rehearse the moves on the route and climb on a 2016 MoonBoard that’s advertised as being in one of the gyms inside the tower.

Beyond hopefully sending some new MoonBoard benchmarks, he’ll spend his evenings in the basement of Taipei 101 eating dumplings at the world-famous Din Tai Fung with his wife, Sanni McCandless. They will sleep in a hotel across from the bamboo-esque building. From his room, he’ll be able to see Taipei 101 every night before he falls asleep.

On January 23, if Honnold stares up at the enormous tower and sees the faces of his daughters begging him not to climb, he can always back down. His bail options include climbing through a window, or getting a rescue. It would be a bad move for a career, but one that could save his life.

Honnold has made this decision before. One example that Free Solo film viewers may recall is an earlier attempt at Free Rider (5.13a). He climbed the first 10 pitches of Freeblast (5.11b), but then decided he wasn’t ready. He ended up rappelling down from Mammoth Terraces.

For a Sender Films production, I helped rig ropes up Scarface (5.12) on Yosemite’s Liberty Cap. Honnold rehearsed the climb, but decided it was too dangerous for him to solo. So he backed off, only climbing a few easier pitches.

During a video shoot for Occulous, Honnold wanted to solo Desert Gold (5.13a) in Las Vegas. After working the difficult off-fingers start, he realized it felt too insecure to climb ropeless. Instead, he traversed in and climbed the easier roof section.

Honnold makes careful, calculated decisions, caring little about external pressure from the media, his friends, or family. It’s part of what makes him climb so well when he’s ropeless.

It’s easy to watch Honnold solo and project judgments on him. Reckless. Dangerous. Insane. But how much of that, I wonder, is people projecting their own feelings and beliefs onto someone else?

Confidence check

In 2009, I was hiking down from the University Wall, aka the U-Wall, in Squamish, British Columbia after trying it with a friend. I’d climbed the first wet 5.12a pitch, then struggled on the next 12a undercling. It was smeary, insecure, and hard. A week before, I’d attempted it with Honnold and he’d hiked it, making it look so easy that any semblance of technical movement or struggle seemed to evaporate. As I headed down, Honnold was walking up with just his shoes and chalkbag in hand.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Just going for a hike,” he said. I knew from his coy answer that he was going to solo the U-Wall. We talked about beta. I told him the wet part wasn’t too bad, that there was a kneebar at the end of the undercling, and that the upper pitches were dirty. Then I said goodbye and walked down the trail.

In the parking lot, I grabbed some binoculars and watched Honnold solo. I was the only one who knew what he was doing. I really didn’t want my friend to die.

On the 12a first pitch, he moved smoothly. Then he reached the undercling. He was smearing his feet and starting to shake. The hold suddenly looked horrible. His feet looked horrendous. It got even worse the closer he got to the crux.

I had to put the binoculars down and take a few breaths. Shaking out my nervousness, I pulled the binoculars back to my eyes and watched Honnold again. He was actually climbing fine, moving smoothly through the difficult terrain. Since he started, in fact, he’d been moving smoothly.

It’d been my hands that were shaking the entire time.

It’s easy to believe that Honnold’s actions are irrational, but chances are, he won’t fall. He has proven that he’s willing to put in the effort to prepare and do the necessary rehearsal to make it secure. If it’s something he’s ultimately unwilling to do, he’ll make a prudent decision.

But more likely, he’ll just go out and have fun, enjoying an unbelievable experience that he’s more than capable of accomplishing.

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