One man took it upon himself to climb to the top of Taipei 101, a 101-story skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan, with no ropes, no attachments, no gear, and he actually made it to the top. Professional climber Alex Honnold just successfully scaled the skyscraper, and in a conversation with Variety, says he did it while listening to Tool the entire time.
“It was mostly Tool,” Honnold explained, “It’s a random playlist that I made, that I shared with production. I made it months ago while I was driving. I’ve been training to it a bunch. Basically, rock music that I’ve liked my whole life.”
Honnold goes on to say that “part of the appeal of music is that actually it helps me with pacing. Each bamboo box had been taking me about five to six and a half minutes. I just know how long the songs are. So it gives you a sense of if you’re going fast or slow. But in this case, it all kept cutting out anyway, and I couldn’t really hear and I was kind of like, “Whatever. I’m just doing my thing.”
He also was asked about the connectivity issues he was having throughout his climb, to which he responded with, “I was totally unstressed about all that stuff. There were times I couldn’t hear anyone. It doesn’t bother me in terms of climbing, because obviously, I can just climb in my own little bubble. I was only worried about it in terms of the broadcast. I have no idea what the timing is, if I’m supposed to be doing something, if someone’s telling me to go faster or slower. I was like, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, but I’ll just climb. It was fine. It’s to be expected with communications. It’s kind of magical that it even did work at all. There are a bunch of spots on the building that are basically dead zones, probably because they have their own transmitters and things. Cell service dies in a bunch of places in the building. So for me to have pretty good communication the whole way up this giant thing in the middle of the city, I was like, it’s pretty good.”
Alex Honnold‘s climb was apart of a live special with Netflix, “Skyscraper Live.” Scaling a whopping 1,667-foot skyscraper – the 11th tallest building in the world – with his bare hands, is pretty metal.
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