Alex Honnold, the rock climber who famously scaled Yosemite\u2019s El Capitan without ropes, will try his hand at a 1,667-foot skyscraper in a spectacle aired live on Netflix. <\/p>\n
Honnold will \u201cfree solo\u201d Taipei 101, the tallest building in Taiwan and among the tallest in the world, beginning at 5 p.m. Pacific.<\/p>\n
Honnold hopes to summit the steel and glass tower in a single go, with no long breaks, he said on his podcast<\/a> \u201cClimbing Gold.\u201d To prepare, he has climbed the building two or three times with ropes, taking notes and studying photos and videos of different sequences, he told The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n The training process has been different from the lead-up to El Capitan, when he reportedly spent hours every other day hanging by his fingertips. \u201cWith a building, you just don\u2019t need that really,\u201d he said on his podcast. \u201cYou just need to be fit.\u201d<\/p>\n The challenge, he said, is the overall physical exertion \u2014 he expects the feat will test his endurance more than his climbing skills.<\/p>\n The venture has drawn some backlash, including a \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d skit<\/a> that spoofed Honnold\u2019s nonchalant attitude, which has earned him the nickname \u201cNo Big Deal\u201d and prompted scientists to study his brain. A Telegraph headline reads<\/a>: \u201cA man might die live on TV tonight. Will you be watching?\u201d<\/p>\n But Honnold, who is married with two young daughters, said he thinks about managing risk all the time. He\u2019s known for meticulously preparing for his climbs, which he says helps him maintain the fearlessness that\u2019s made him famous.<\/p>\n Ultimately, he couldn\u2019t pass up the opportunity to accomplish something that would have had his childhood self \u201cso psyched,\u201d he said on his podcast.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always loved climbing anything that I\u2019m allowed to climb on,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I generally try to say yes to any kind of interesting life experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Honnold has been climbing buildings since he was 6, long before he started rock climbing, he said. He scaled his childhood home, an auditorium at a nearby school and, later, a high-rise dorm at the University of Colorado, Boulder, he said.<\/p>\n He grew up in Sacramento, where both his parents were professors at a local community college, and started working at a climbing gym at 14, he wrote in a 2018 column<\/a> in WealthSimple Magazine. He later enrolled in \u2014 then dropped out of \u2014 an engineering program at UC Berkeley and moved into his mom\u2019s old minivan, which he\u2019d take to go climbing in Joshua Tree, he wrote.<\/p>\n A few years back, Honnold\u2019s mother Dierdre Wolownick made headlines of her own when she scaled the face of El Capitan on her 70th birthday<\/a>, becoming the oldest woman to achieve the feat.<\/p>\n Honnold climbed Moonlight Buttress in Zion National Park and the regular northwest face of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, both without ropes, in 2008. Each was considered a career milestone. He soon gained professional sponsorships that included the clothing brands The North Face and La Sportiva.<\/p>\n In 2010, National Geographic named the then-25-year-old<\/a> one of its adventurers of the year after he and partner Sean Leary climbed three different routes up El Capitan in 24 hours, breaking the speed record for consecutive ascents. Leary later died during a BASE jump<\/a> in Zion.<\/p>\n After climbing expeditions to Chad and Borneo, Honnold was inspired to research environmental activism and in 2012 founded the Honnold Foundation to support solar energy projects, according to the organization\u2019s website<\/a>. The nonprofit gave out about $3 million in grants last year, he told the Associated Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n Honnold has also, at times, been a somewhat polarizing figure in the climbing world, with some criticizing his decision to forego ropes and other protective equipment. He and four other athletes were dropped in 2014 by a sponsor, Clif Bar, which said it was no longer comfortable supporting BASE jumping, free soloing, or slacklining due to the risk involved.<\/p>\n Honnold responded with a New York Times op-ed,<\/a> writing that the decision wouldn\u2019t change his approach to climbing, which already involved carefully weighing the risks and benefits of any serious ascent.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are certainly better technical climbers than me,\u201d he wrote. \u201cBut if I have a particular gift, it\u2019s a mental one \u2014 the ability to keep it together where others might freak out.\u201d<\/p>\n That preternatural calm appears to have a biological basis. Scientists studied Honnold\u2019s brain in 2016 and found that his amygdala \u2014 a set of neurons sometimes referred to as the \u201cfear detector\u201d \u2014 simply didn\u2019t respond to images that would typically disturb or excite others, according to the Medical University of South Carolina<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWith free-soloing, obviously I know that I\u2019m in danger, but feeling fearful while I\u2019m up there is not helping me in any way,\u201d he told National Geographic<\/a> the following year, when he became the first person to \u201cfree solo\u201d <\/a>Yosemite\u2019s 3,000-foot tall El Capitan. \u201cIt\u2019s only hindering my performance, so I just set it aside and leave it be.\u201d<\/p>\n The peak of Yosemite\u2019s granite wall is higher than the tallest building in the world and requires climbers to navigate a maze of fissures, crevices and cracks. The climb became the subject of an Academy Award-winning documentary, \u201cFree Solo.\u201d <\/p>\n