On January 24, 2026, Alex Honnold embarked upon a remarkable—and gravity-defying—challenge. He found himself standing before Taipei 101, a glass, steel, and concrete building that towers some 1,667 feet above the Taiwanese city. His goal was to scale all of the skyscraper’s 101 floors without ropes, harnesses, or safety equipment, as part of Netflix’s Skyscraper Live special.
Honnold first burst onto the international scene in 2017, after becoming the first person to climb El Capitan in California’s Yosemite national park without a rope. The achievement was captured in the documentary Free Solo, which won an Oscar in 2019. The free climber has completed many such climbs throughout his career, but Taipei 101 was a different beast entirely. The building would not only be the largest he had ever climbed, but the most unpredictable. Unlike natural rock faces, skyscrapers are steeper and more repetitive in their structure, requiring a new set of maneuvers.
“As a kid, I climbed buildings quite a lot. I haven’t as an adult because it’s illegal,” Honnold told The New York Times ahead of his Taipei 101 climb. “Basically it’s just really hard to get permission to climb a building, and anytime you get permission, you kind of have to say yes.”
To prepare, Honnold told the Times that he climbed a handful of buildings using ropes. By the time he approached Taipei 101, though, he had all but abandoned his safety gear and was armed only with custom climbing shoes and a chalk bag. He began his ascent in his signature red t-shirt, bracing for windy conditions while navigating the building’s 64-floor section filled with “bamboo boxes.”
“I think the hardest part of the climb will be what we’re calling the ‘bamboo boxes,’” he predicted in an interview with Netflix. “[The boxes] are eight segments in the middle of the building that are overhanging. Each one is eight floors, so it represents 64 floors in the middle of the building, and they’re all the same. The boxes are definitely the most physically demanding part.”
It ultimately took Honnold just over an hour and a half to climb Taipei 101. “Sick,” he said once he reached the summit. He was greeted by his wife, and was congratulated by Taiwan’s Vice-President Hsiao Bi-khim on X. Notably, his time halves the record of the only other person to scale the tower, namely Alain “Spiderman” Robert. But, in contrast to Honnold, the Frenchman had used ropes and a harness, completing the climb in about four hours.
“I mean, it was so perfect and so beautiful,” Hannold said during NBC News’s TODAY show. “It was quite an experience.”
Honnold’s historic climb can be viewed in its entirety on Netflix.
On January 24, Alex Honnold broke records by scaling the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 skyscraper in a little over an hour and a half, as captured in Netflix’s Skyscraper Live.
Sources: ‘It feels infinite’: Alex Honnold describes his rope-free climb up Taipei 101 skyscraper; Inside Alex Honnold’s Mindset Ahead of His Live Climb of Taipei 101; He Climbed a Cliff in ‘Free Solo.’ Now He’ll Try a Skyscraper; Climber Alex Honnold scales 101-floor skyscraper without safety gear
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