Was it wrong for Alex Honnold, a father of two children under five, to risk his life climbing a 1,667ft skyscraper without safety gear live on Netflix?
It is a moral dilemma anyone who held their breath while watching the married 40-year-old scale the Taipei 101 on Sunday will have grappled with.
For some, his decision to put himself one lapse of concentration or mistake away from near-certain death while his wife Sanni McCandless, 33, watched on was beyond the pale.
Honnold and Sanni’s daughters, June and Alice (four and two), would have been left without a father and serious questions would have been asked of the streaming giant, who said they would have cut away from the shot if the worst happened.
‘To be orphaned because daddy chose to scale a skyscraper free solo would be tragic and embarrassing’, read one criticism that echoed plenty of other takes online.
The word ’embarrassing’ was the same that Honnold used to described the sum he was paid for the stunt, which is understood to be in the mid-six figures.
It took Honnold just over 90 minutes to scale the building and there were a number of jaw-dropping moments, not least when he released both hands near the top, leant backwards while gripping on with his thighs and added more chalk to his palms.
On the 89th floor, Sanni and a number of fans were the other side of the glass, smiling and waving at the world’s most famous climber.
He smiled back and appeared relaxed, eventually muttering the word ‘sick’ as he clambered to the top and took a selfie.
‘Netflix is insane for putting Alex Honnold’s wife (and the mother of his kids) in a window directly in front of him 1000 feet in the air as he climbs one of the world’s tallest buildings on a live broadcast’, one person wrote.
‘This seems so tacky. How much is he getting paid,’ was the verdict of another upset viewer. ‘Also he’s 40-years-old! That’s when most accidents happen, when middle-aged people think they’re still young. Doesn’t he have children now, he must be so unhappy to risk so much for so little.’
Others said they could not ‘condone’ his decision to scale the building, that used to be the world’s tallest long before the construction of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa in 2010, which stands at a staggering 2,717 feet.
But for Honnold, the unhappiness only sets in when he’s stuck on terra firma unable to pursue his passion.
He shot to worldwide fame after an astonishing documentary following his climb of El Capitan, titled Free Solo, won an Academy Award. It was described as ‘one of the great athletic feats of any kind, ever’ and made the skyscraper seem, and probably feel like child’s play.
It was during the filming of that documentary that Honnold’s relationship with Sanni was blossoming but also under threat, with the ferociously single-minded climber worried she would distract him from the greatness he was chasing.
They met at one of his book signings in 2015. ‘I hadn’t known a single thing about him, but after listening to him speak, I decided he was cute and funny, so I left my phone number on the table as I walked away,’ she wrote in an essay for Outside. ‘A few weeks later, we went on our first date.’
Four years later they were engaged and in 2020 tied the knot in a quiet ceremony by a lake.
When the couple met, Honnold lived in a van and they’ve since moved to a £1.2million home in Las Vegas. Sanni is an accomplished rock climber herself and understands the risks her husband takes.
After Honnold completed the climb on Sunday, Sanni said: ‘When you really love someone, and you think that they might be stressed, you’re kind of like, “I wish I could take their place”.
‘But in this case, I was like, “Thank God I’m not him!”
‘I knew the second he left the ground it would all just kind of… get quieter, kind of be a little bit more of an internal experience, and then just be joyful.’
‘So, I was really happy when it just started. There wasn’t any waiting. He got to do what he wanted to do.’
It hasn’t always been a smooth ride and Sanni previously admitted her presence during the Free Solo filming in Yosemite caused friction.
‘I could tell the filmmakers were frustrated by my presence — because, let’s face it, relationships complicate things,’ she told Outside in 2021.
‘Even Alex came to me at one point wondering if we should break up.
‘He worried that I would get in the way of his climbing and that he needed to choose: love or greatness. I remember asking, “Why not both?’ And so we forged ahead”.
‘We had to discuss not only the prospect of death, but what we each needed to truly feel alive. The overwhelming sea of press and publicity taught me to let go of what other people think of me and my relationship.’
The risk factor of the Yosemite climb thrillingly captured in that documentary was significantly higher that the skyscraper, which is perhaps not something picked up by all viewers of the Netflix live stream.
Alain Robert, a 63-year-old French climber known as ‘Spiderman’, climbed Taipei 101 on top rope two decades ago and is friends with Honnold.
Prior to Honnold’s attempt to free solo the same construction, Robert said: ‘I know Alex. He has already planned his limits. There is not even a one-in-100-million chance that this will be his last climb.’
Honnold is regularly asked about his death-defying pursuits and the decision to keep pushing on despite parental responsibilities.
‘I didn’t want to die before, and I still don’t want to die now’, he succinctly explained to Fatherly.
‘As a climber, I’ve always had a close relationship with risk; risk management. You’re always thinking these things through quite a lot, and having kids, it not like it suddenly changed my calculus around it. I still don’t want to die doing this activity.’
He also thinks the optics of free soloing to those who don’t fully understand the sport appear far more severe than they are in reality.
He went on: ‘I don’t know if rock climbing is totally analogous to riding a motorcycle, let’s say, because I think that a lot of motorcycle riding is random risk.
‘Like you’re worried about getting hit by other people. And it’s true that there is some of that in climbing, but for the types of climbing I’m doing, free soloing, for the most part its not random so much as if you fail, it’s often because fail. It’s more on you.
‘The variables are slightly more under your control. It feels less like rolling the dice, even though to the average person, from an external perspective, it all looks the same.’
And Sanni accepts that the joy he experiences from it is what makes Honnold who he is.
‘It’s still clear that that’s what he needs. Alex is the happiest and best version of himself when he gets to spend a lot of time outside and when he is climbing. He’s so cranky when he doesn’t get to climb,’ she said
For the money men at Neflix, Skyscraper Live will be marked down a triumph. No doubt they will already be discussing how to top it.
The real question is, how far will 40-year-old father-of-two Honnold push himself next time?
