He summited a skyscraper on Netflix. Would Alex Honnold climb one in Sacramento?
Alex Honnold wanted to know if Sacramento’s “Darth Vader” building was still standing.
Honnold, 40, captured attention by free solo climbing the 101-story skyscraper Taipei 101, ascending without ropes or protective equipment during the Netflix program “Skyscraper Live.” It aired in the U.S. on Jan. 24. Previously, Honnold became the first person to free solo climb Yosemite’s El Capitan, captured in the 2018 documentary “Free Solo.”
Honnold now lives in the Las Vegas area but grew up in Carmichael, climbing as a child at Granite Arch Climbing Center in Rancho Cordova. He also surmounted local school and church buildings, but not a Sacramento skyscraper.
“As a kid, I never even looked at those buildings because they seemed so out of reach,” Honnold said during a phone interview on Monday .
Honnold mentioned the Darth Vader building in response to a question about what building he might like to climb in Sacramento. He gave a popular nickname of the 28-story Renaissance Tower, a mass of steel and dark glass that’s helped define Sacramento’s skyline since its 1989 completion. Honnold admitted the building might not be climbable.
“That’s the thing is that many buildings, maybe most buildings even, just don’t go,” Honnold said. “They’re not possible to climb because they’re just sheer, smooth steel or glass. That’s part of what makes Taipei 101 so special: Because it is possible to climb.”
As Honnold settles back into home life and embarks on a media tour that included an appearance Monday on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” his connection to Sacramento looms in the background. While he has few ties to the area anymore, it’s a place where climbers still know him and a place that helped get him to what he’s doing now.
Climbing acquaintances react
John Robinson caught a little of “Skyscraper Live” on his phone during a climbing excursion at Silver Eagle, off Highway 50. When Robinson returned home, he watched the full program after the live portion had concluded.
Climbers talk about anxiously watching “Free Solo” even knowing that Honnold survived. This was not Robinson’s experience watching Honnold coolly climb Taipei 101.
“I wasn’t concerned about him, because what he did was very easy for him,” Robinson said.
Honnold said that Robinson, who is now 81 and lives in Elk Grove, played a formative role in his climbing career and even helped him pick out a Ford Econoline E-150 van in the mid-2000s, which Honnold lived in for about a decade.
They also climbed together, with Robinson saying it was generally belayed, or roped, climbing.
Robinson said he reached out to Honnold after Honnold’s father died of a heart attack in 2004, after learning about him through climber Aidan Maguire.
“Aidan told me that there was this young kid that was free soloing things, and his dad had just died and he was concerned about his safety,” Robinson said.
Maguire, 68, still shakes his head at what he sees Honnold doing.
“I think there was a discussion about whether he’ll live to see 30,” said Maguire, who lives in Placerville. “And he’s past 30 and he’s got a couple of kids and he seems to be doing fine.”
People like Robinson and Maguire worry about Honnold continuing to free solo climb. Maguire said that granite climbing at places like El Capitan can be very tenuous.
“No matter how good you are and how many times you’ve done it, it’s very hard to make that stuff solid,” Maguire said. “It’s always going to be just, just a tiny little bit of rubber connection and whether that rubber happens to stick.”
What motivates Honnold
Those who’ve known Honnold since his early days at Granite Arch, such as Matt McCormick, know a bit about what motivates him.
“There’s 100 things – and some of them amazing – that he’s done that don’t get a lot of attention,” McCormick said during an interview at Sacramento Pipeworks. “And he’s doing it because he’s intrinsically motivated.”
Some of what also drives Honnold is making the world a better place. In the early 2010s, he created a charitable effort that has grown into the Honnold Foundation, a nonprofit that helps bring solar power to underdeveloped countries.
“As he started to climb outside the U.S. and to travel to places like Borneo and Chad, he saw what energy poverty looked like and what it meant for people to get access to electricity for the first time,” said Emily Teitsworth, the foundation’s executive director.
Honnold said that when he started climbing close to a billion people globally lacked power. He said that the number is still around 800 million.
His nonprofit is making a difference in these efforts.
Teitsworth said the Honnold Foundation distributed over $4 million in grants last year and that Honnold is still involved with its work, keeping a board seat and providing financial assistance.
“He’s still giving about a third of his annual income to support our core operations and some of our staffing,” Teitsworth said. “And then we fundraise around that.”
She noted that Honnold — who took a selfie standing atop Taipei 101 — gained about 800,000 Instagram followers with his climb and that many people were just learning about the foundation.
Asked how much of his motivation to climb Taipei 101 was about doing something that had never been done before, making money or improving the world, Honnold said it was a balance of everything.
“I think for me, the core, though, is always: Do I get to climb something cool?” Honnold said. “Am I excited about climbing something?”
Honnold said he’ll climb anything that he can get permission to climb. And he doesn’t struggle to remain calm when he’s climbing.
“I’m up there because I want to be up there. So it’s easy to stay calm, because it’s all by choice,” Honnold said. “It’s fun.”
What’s next for Honnold
Honnold‘s five-part streaming series, “Get a Little Out There With Alex Honnold,” is set to debut on OutsideTV on Feb. 26. It focuses on destinations in Nevada.
Asked what was on-tap for him next, Alex Honnold offered no major plans.
“I don’t know what’s next right now,” Honnold said. “I mean, basically, just back to home life and spending time with the family and climbing as much as I can and just training and stuff.”
He laughed when asked if offers were coming in for him to climb structures like the Eiffel Tower. “If somebody asked me to climb the Eiffel Tower, I definitely would,” Honnold said. “That’d be so incredible.”
Honnold is known for his preparation as a climber. He first considered Taipei 101 in 2013 for a television project that didn’t come to fruition. Honnold scouted the building again in September, when the heat forced him to wear gloves, and chose to climb in January for cooler weather.
The preparation goes back to his time in the Sacramento area, to being a kid at Granite Arch.
“That is the preparation,” Honnold said. “It’s all climbing. So literally, the eight years I spent going to the gym nonstop in Sacramento – really, probably 10 years because I dropped out of college. As good or bad of a climber I am now, it’s because of all those years in the gym as a kid.”
