American rock climber Alex Honnold has completed his terrifying ascent up a 101-storey tower in Taiwan without ropes that was broadcast live on Netflix.
The 40-year-old successfully scaled Taiwan’s 1,667 feet Taipei 101 skyscraper – formerly the world’s tallest building – on Sunday morning in his signature free solo style.
Thousands of people, who had lined the streets around Taipei 101 to watch, went wild in celebration as he waved from the summit and even took a selfie after completing the ascent in 1:31:40.
Honnold’s wife Sanni greeted him with a kiss near the top as he started to make his way back down using a rope. She had been watching from the ground and then made her way up the building to get a better look.
Much to the relief of Netflix’s viewers, Honnold agreed to take the elevator back down to ground level with the wind swirling around him.
He looked composed throughout his climb, talking to Netflix host Elle Duncan throughout and even asking why his music had stopped playing as he tackled steel and glass surfaces.
Honnold’s ascent had to be put back 24 hours due to wet weather conditions in the city on Saturday morning. The broadcast was also on a 10-second delay.
The much-anticipated event has caused excitement across the globe but has led to some fans questioning the 40-year-old’s motive, as he is a married father of two girls.
Built in 2004, Taipei 101 features mostly glass curtain walls, with balconies near the top.
Honnold is known for his iconic ropeless ascent up Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan, documented in ‘Free Solo’.
He said: ‘When you look at climbing objectives, you look for things that are singular.
‘Something like El Capitan where it’s way bigger and way prouder than all the things around it.’
Honnold is not be the first climber to ascend the skyscraper but would be the first to do so without a rope.
French rock climber Alain Robert scaled the building on Christmas Day in 2004, as part of the grand opening of what was then the world’s tallest building.
He took nearly four hours to finish, almost twice as long as what he anticipated, while nursing an injured elbow and battered by wind and rain.
Honnold, who had been training for months, previously said he did not think the climb would be hard.
He said he had practiced the moves on the building. Speaking on a climbing podcast, he added: ‘I don’t think it’ll be that extreme.
‘We’ll see. I think it’s the perfect sweet spot where it’s hard enough to be engaging for me and obviously an interesting climb.’
The building has 101 floors, with the hardest part being the 64 floors comprising the middle section – the ‘bamboo boxes’ that give the structure its signature look.
Divided into eight, each segment will have eight floors of steep, overhanging climbing followed by a balcony that Honnold would be able to rest on.
