One very brave daredevil
Alex Honnold has successfully climbed a skyscraper in Taiwan’s capital without a harness, rope or any safety equipment.
The American climber on Sunday scaled the Taipei 101 building, which is named precisely for the number of its floors.
The climb was delayed by wet weather for a day, as it was originally set to take place on Saturday.
The building is 508m tall, it’s made of steel, glass and concrete and is designed to resemble a bamboo stick.
Honnold, a 40-year-old from Sacramento in the US state of California, is famous for being the first person to climb El Capitan, the 915m granite cliff in California’s Yosemite national park.
He also did that without ropes or safety gear.
And now his climb in Taipei was streamed live on Netflix, which announced there would be a delay on the live feed, just in the event of the worst happening.
It took Honnold only one hour and 31 minutes to climb, and he used one word to celebrate his achievement: “Sick.”
A Frenchman who dubbed himself “Spiderman”, Alain Robert, previously made it to the top of Taipei 101 in four hours, and he did so with a harness and ropes.
Honnold was congratulated by Taiwan’s Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim on the ascent.
“Congratulations to Alex Honnold on successfully completing the 101 climb! Though I admit I would probably feel sick, too, barely able to watch”, she wrote on X.
This wasn’t Honnold’s first extreme climb in his career, as there’s a documentary about his ascent of El Capitan, titled Free Solo, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2018.
#Climber #Alex #Honnold #successfully #scales #101floor #skyscraper #safety #gear
