One of the most incredible feats of strength and daring I've ever witnessed. The only thing at all comparable was watching Baumgartner freefall back to earth from the edge of space. Unbelievable!
We had the privilege to watch at first from the SE corner of the building and later as he climbed by the the observation deck on the 89th floor. Hair raising stuff I'll never forget.
Very impressive feat, no doubt about it. But the commentary on the Netflix broadcast ruined the spectator experience completely. It was utterly unbearable.
Money! He has a family to provide for and his unique skillset is "climbing below his grade but with no support", so that's the service he offers the world.
(I get that there are more motivations underneath free soloing in general, but I doubt Taipei 101 with a million cameras is the climb he'd choose if it were not for the money.)
You spend a ton of time belaying you partner (with whom you need to coordinate free time, which is a major hassle if you're trying to climb on a weekday as an unemployed dirtbag) or just clipping the rope into protection while roped climbing. Free soloing you get to do nothing but climb. There's ways to toprope solo so you can just flow up a route without having to fiddle with any of your equipment while you're climbing, but even that will require you to spend a solid 25% of your time rigging (and that's assuming you're efficient, a lot of climbers don't rig very efficiently). A rope team will climb about 3-4 pitches of moderate difficulty in an hour if they're efficient. A free soloist can easily get this done in a quarter or a third of the time. You climb a whole lot more and you get to only climb instead of working with ropes.
Your average roped climbers at a crag might get 3 pitches of climbing in an hour (sometimes even less when they're on hard stuff where they flail). You can get that done in 15 minutes free soloing. After climbing for a while there's a lot of terrain where you know the odds of falling are minuscule, and you know exactly when you feel insecure and have the option of backing off by down climbing. It's a very common practice among alpinists, where moving fast is an enormous advantage and the terrain usually isn't difficult compared to current sport climbing standards.
In other tower climbing events, some things cannot be free climbed (too smooth, fingers aren't made for window cleaning tracks, etc).
The 1988 ascent of the Sydney Centrepoint was a technical climb with custom jumars for both the cables and the window tracks and a fun challenge for all, both the scouting, the climb, and the filming.
Originally titled The Only Building I Ever Wanted To Climb, later released as A Spire, there's a documentary film that follows a climb at night of "only" 1,000 feet.
Come on, plenty of fathers and husbands have worked in coal mines, oil rigs; gone to war; served on ICE raids against armed insurgents. It is often hazardous to be a breadwinner. It seems that this dude is following his passion, for better or worse.
Alex Honnold: No free soloist ever died doing anything cutting edge. Nobody died doing something really hard. A handful people died doing things that are easy. Most soloist died in different types of accidents...base jumping, rogue wave.
In his El Capitan climb (Free Solo), Alex was worried about cameras or presence of friends watching interfering with the climb. As oppose to that, this climb must have felt very different!
I and some friends observed his climb from the base of Taipei 101. Thousands of people were present and it was very good fun how the crowd would react when he made it to another ledge, and when he made it to the top people were shouting and cheering. It was like a great big party.
I imagine Threads and Instagram just got hit with like ten thousand vertical video clips of the climb if you're interested in seeing for yourself.
For me it was almost scary how abruptly he started and made it up the first ledge. Dude just fuckin went for it. Made me realize, for the first time, how truly incredible the feat was to be.
The observation deck level is often so windy I worry about losing my phone if I take it out. I can't comprehend how he managed that wind while hanging on by his fingertips. Then he stood at the tippy top for quite some time, which must be unbelievably windy. At some point he was tethered in for the rapelle down though so maybe he clipped in right as he got to the top.
Stuff like this seems a bit... selfish? to me. Why risk falling, and people having to see that/having to clean that up? For a bit of adrenaline and publicity? Meh.
Netflix has a stream with close-up cameras, as they were the ones who arranged the whole thing. Unfortunately the commentary and color grading are both terrible: https://www.netflix.com/watch/81987107
We watched the livestream together, such a stressful watch, glad he made it up there. As my partner and both do bouldering, it definitely gives another level of appreciation of just how insane this is. (I still get stressed at times when I'm just 2-3m up in the air lol).
I thought he had freakishly large hands before, but that picture of him on the top with his hands in the air makes him look like the lawyer uncle from Always Sunny. He's built for free solo.
This was far more thrilling and exciting to watch than I thought it would be. Which feels wrong when I say it, but I don't mean it was a good watch because of the consequences of failing. Rather because it was amazing watching a human perform at such a peak level.
It was amazing. But when it concluded I realized how watching it had made it seem, in retrospect, easy, inevitable, safe. Crazy as that sounds, but watching it updated my perspective. It was "easy", and "safe" if you had trained and worked for it. The possibilities of humanity!
I need to share a video [0] which helped contextualize Alex Honnold for me by contrasting him with another climber I've watched for years: Magnus Midtbo. In this video they're solo climbing a fairly simple and safe mountain, and Magnus is visibly stressed out while Alex calmly shouts encouragement all while recording.
When watching Alex Honnold in Free Solo, I understood there was a exceptional aspect to him, but it took me seeing him climb with other people to really grasp the magnitude.
Reminds me of that time I was taking climbing lessons in the Belgian Ardennes. Helmet on, in harness, hanging in the ropes, holding tight to not fall, we where climbing half way up the mountain, when a person out of nowhere ask if he can pass and just flew up the key section of the route. It was just a local, casual clothes, no harness, no helmet, no rope, maybe not even proper climbing shoes but I can't recall that. Just casually climbing the mountain like he was on a lunch stroll. Even now with years of experience I still don't have that confidence.
About to watch the film now. I know there are controversial aspects to this, but in my opinion this is something I myself need to allow happen. Alex know it himself, that there is a risk of ending it, but most people will not understand the feelings he get before, during and after a climb. So who am I to judge from my couch in my livingroom whether he should be allowed to pursue his lifestyle or not. He is not actively hurting anyone.
After watching the documentary about him I don't really like the person, but here's my take: will he be doing the same if there was no TV, nor social media?
I think anyone who’s ever worked in construction would balk at the idea of hanging your life on pieces of building facade. Except for the the pieces stopping people falling through the outside windows and walls themselves, most of the outside decorative stuff is only designed to hold itself onto the building and not much more. He’s potentially hanging his 200lbs on something that’s intended to hold 0lbs.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 59.6 ms ] thread(I get that there are more motivations underneath free soloing in general, but I doubt Taipei 101 with a million cameras is the climb he'd choose if it were not for the money.)
Your average roped climbers at a crag might get 3 pitches of climbing in an hour (sometimes even less when they're on hard stuff where they flail). You can get that done in 15 minutes free soloing. After climbing for a while there's a lot of terrain where you know the odds of falling are minuscule, and you know exactly when you feel insecure and have the option of backing off by down climbing. It's a very common practice among alpinists, where moving fast is an enormous advantage and the terrain usually isn't difficult compared to current sport climbing standards.
The 1988 ascent of the Sydney Centrepoint was a technical climb with custom jumars for both the cables and the window tracks and a fun challenge for all, both the scouting, the climb, and the filming.
Originally titled The Only Building I Ever Wanted To Climb, later released as A Spire, there's a documentary film that follows a climb at night of "only" 1,000 feet.
... with a massive overhang.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Tower
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qch1Gd8VLK0
Come on, plenty of fathers and husbands have worked in coal mines, oil rigs; gone to war; served on ICE raids against armed insurgents. It is often hazardous to be a breadwinner. It seems that this dude is following his passion, for better or worse.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9WWUNDb_S0o
I imagine Threads and Instagram just got hit with like ten thousand vertical video clips of the climb if you're interested in seeing for yourself.
For me it was almost scary how abruptly he started and made it up the first ledge. Dude just fuckin went for it. Made me realize, for the first time, how truly incredible the feat was to be.
The observation deck level is often so windy I worry about losing my phone if I take it out. I can't comprehend how he managed that wind while hanging on by his fingertips. Then he stood at the tippy top for quite some time, which must be unbelievably windy. At some point he was tethered in for the rapelle down though so maybe he clipped in right as he got to the top.
A YouTube search pulls up a stream filmed from the ground (a nearby building?) using a zoom lens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzthkg2ti2Q
When watching Alex Honnold in Free Solo, I understood there was a exceptional aspect to him, but it took me seeing him climb with other people to really grasp the magnitude.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyya23MPoAI
Alex is just a bit too crazy to follow him. I don't like suicidal tendencies