A “Sick” Achievement: Alex Honnold Becomes the First to Free Solo Taipei 101

Imagine sitting in your office, typing out a document and casually looking outside your window to catch a glimpse of something climbing across the windows. Was it a bird? Or a monkey? Upon closer inspection and some asking around, you realized to your surprise that it was a person, climbing the towering walls of Taipei 101.

On January 25th, 2026, Alex Honnold attempted a seemingly impossible feat and he succeeded. He became the first person in the world to scale one of the world’s tallest buildings, Taipei 101, in about one-hour-and-thirty minutes. Though several have climbed the Taipei 101 in the past, none have done it without safety equipment or ropes (a method called “free-soloing”), nor in the 1 hour 31 minutes and 34 seconds Honnold accomplished.

Honnold is a world-renowned American rock climber best known for his rope-free ascent of El Capitan’s 237-meter-tall rock face. Beyond this defining achievement, the California native climber has set numerous records, pioneering the free-solo movement in rock climbing.

Made from steel, glass and concrete to resemble a stick of bamboo, Honnold’s newest challenge stands at the towering height of 508 meters. Taking approximately 5 years to build, Taipei 101 stands as an important cultural landmark that one usually pictures when thinking of Taipei. At completion, it was the world’s tallest building until 2009 and still stands as the world’s 10th tallest building.

Honnold’s ascent of the bamboo-inspired skyscraper began in the pre-dawn shadows, a stark contrast to the neon-lit bustle of the Xinyi District below. The facade of Taipei 101 presented a unique challenge: slick glass curtain walls and repetitive steel nodes. To the onlookers below, he appeared as a tiny, rhythmic speck moving against a sea of reflective blue-green panels, defying gravity and the buffeting winds that often swirl around the tower’s eight structural tiers.

As he reached the upper sections—the “pagoda” segments of the tower—the physical toll became evident. The humidity of Taipei’s subtropical climate made maintaining a grip on the metal casing treacherous, yet Honnold moved with the calculated composure documented during the live global broadcast on Netflix Tudum. When he finally hauled himself over the railing of the 91st-floor outdoor observatory, he wasn’t met with the silence of a wilderness peak, but with the stunned gasps of a skeleton crew and security detail

Critics and climbing purists are already dissecting the feat. The architectural, bamboo-like sections of the tower provided brief horizontal reprieves during the free solo, yet they introduced dangerous, unpredictable wind gusts as noted by Netflix Tudum. Commentators highlighted that these structural nodes in the building’s design added significant risk, despite offering slight relief in climbing angle. Regardless of the controversy, Honnold’s name is now permanently etched into the steel and glass history of the city. He didn’t just climb a building; he turned a symbol of corporate strength into a playground of human possibility.