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At 9 a.m. on 25 January 2026, Alex Honnold started climbing Taipei 101 without a rope. An hour and 31 minutes later he stood on the spire. Netflix streamed it live worldwide on a 10-second delay, so that if he fell, the feed could be cut before viewers saw it (Wikipedia: Skyscraper Live).
For many people in Taiwan, this was the first time they watched free soloing closely. This is part 5 of the Other Climbing Disciplines series, and it comes late because it is not a "next step". It does not teach you how to start free soloing. It covers accident data, the ethics debate, and why climbing alone on a rope has its own risks; for how to rope solo, see part 6, How to Rope Solo.
What it is, and where the edges are
The Wikipedia article on free solo climbing defines it as climbing technical terrain with no rope and no protective equipment, only climbing shoes and chalk (or axes and crampons on ice).
The line between free soloing and two kinds of climbing you may know is blurry:
- Bouldering is technically free soloing too (no rope, no protection), but nobody calls it that. Problems taller than about 7–10 m are called highballs; even with pads, a fall can cause serious injury, and climbers still argue about where a highball becomes a free solo. For protecting boulder falls, see Bouldering falls and ankle injuries.
- Deep water soloing: Wikipedia lists it as a form of soloing in which you fall into water. See Part 1.
One more pair of terms gets mixed up: free climbing is not free soloing. Free climbing means you don't pull on gear to move up; the rope still catches falls. Sport and trad are both free climbing.
Accident data: mostly on familiar moderate routes
The American Alpine Club's August 2025 accident column is blunt (The Prescription—Free Solo Fall): every year brings a handful of free solo accidents; they are almost always fatal and usually happen on moderate, popular routes.
Its example is the Flatirons above Boulder, Colorado:
- 16 December 2024: Keith Hayes, 42, fell to his death from Freezeway (5.7) on the Second Flatiron. A friend said the route had no ice, snow or loose rock. Hayes was experienced and had soloed the route many times.
- The next day, 17 December: a 27-year-old man fell to his death from the Standard East Face (5.4) of the Third Flatiron. The AAC calls it one of the most popular beginner routes in the US, and many people climb it ropeless.
- The AAC accident database lists 33 accidents and 11 deaths in the Flatirons since the 1950s, many of them unroped.
The AAC's conclusion: experience and fitness don't guarantee survival, and familiarity can actually lower your focus.
These are accident totals, not rates. The 2025 edition of ANAC records nine free solo and deep water solo accidents combined in North America in 2024; Climbing.com notes that because so few people climb ropeless, the rate may still be quite high. Honnold succeeding again and again doesn't make the activity low-risk.
Another case is a death on El Cajon Mountain, California, in December 2022 (AAC accident column). The 22-year-old climber meant to solo a 5.8 but ended up on Leonids, a three-pitch 5.9 next to it. A witness said he looked tense by the third bolt and grabbed bolts now and then on the way up. He fell on the second pitch. The local accident reporter said it was the third free solo death in Southern California that year.
The witness raised something people often overlook. The climber fell from less than five feet away from him, and as a soloist, he said, you also put the people below you in danger. He had flashbacks for about a week afterwards.
Well-known soloists have also died on terrain that wasn't hard for them. Wikipedia's list includes Jimmy Jewell, who died on an easy route in Wales in 1987, and John Bachar, who died soloing at Dike Wall near Mammoth Lakes, California, in 2009.
Reading Honnold's view alongside the accident data
In The Impossible Climb, his book about Honnold, journalist Mark Synnott records Honnold's own observation: no free soloist has ever fallen while pushing their limit. (This comes from a book review summarizing the book; I have not read the original.)
At first glance this sounds like "it's safe as long as you don't push your limit". Set it next to the AAC data, though, and the two don't contradict each other:
- Honnold: deaths don't happen at the hardest moments.
- AAC: deaths often happen on familiar, easy routes, because familiarity lowers focus.
Read together, the conclusion isn't "easy routes are safe". It is that without a rope, any small mistake has zero margin, and people make small mistakes most often in easy, familiar places. A foot slips, a hold breaks, you lose focus for a second. On a rope that is just a fall. Free soloing, it is death.
Taipei 101 and the ethics debate
DW's Chinese-language report (in Mandarin) collected both sides.
Honnold's side. He told CNN the climb carried almost no risk for him, and that driving drunk is more dangerous. German Olympic climber Alexander Megos said Taipei 101 was actually easy for Honnold, nowhere near human limits, but that without a rope the consequences are extreme. He also said Honnold does it out of passion, not to gamble his life for attention.
The critics. German media saw it as climbing packaged for maximum commercial reach; some called it voyeurism. Claudia Paganini, an Austrian philosopher who studies media ethics, told DW that broadcasts like this can normalize high-risk behaviour and invite imitation, and that repeated reminders that the climber is an exceptional professional can't fully undo that. Several outlets also brought up October 2025, when Balin Miller's fatal fall on El Capitan was livestreamed and many viewers said they were left traumatized.
The debate isn't new. Wikipedia notes that sponsors have split: in 2014 Clif Bar dropped five climbers, Honnold among them, citing the risks they take, while The North Face and Red Bull have promoted free soloists. When Climbing magazine ran a free solo feature in 2022, every article carried a note that it did not endorse the practice, and stressed that among the climbers they surveyed, only a tiny minority do it.
The "biggest urban free solo" claim is disputed too
Honnold and Netflix claimed Taipei 101 was the biggest urban free solo in history, and Outside reported it that way. Climbing.com's report was later updated: in 1986, Dan Goodwin climbed Toronto's CN Tower without a rope. The tower is 553 m tall, but Goodwin counts only the section up to the observation deck, a little over 1,100 feet, as a free solo, not the spire. He also concedes that if you count both climbs only to the observation deck, Taipei 101's deck (1,253 feet) is higher; if you count to the spire, his is. "Biggest" depends on how you measure. It isn't a record you can simply stamp.
Rope soloing: climbing alone has its own risks
Rope soloing means climbing without a belayer, protecting yourself with a rope and devices. The most common form is top-rope soloing (TRS): you rig a fixed rope above the route, attach devices to it that slide up as you climb, and the devices lock the rope if you fall.
The AAC's February 2025 accident column says top-rope soloing lets people self-belay when they have no partner, or lets a team split up to rehearse sections of a route. The February 2023 column says top-rope solo mishaps seem to be on the rise: Accidents recorded four from 2019 through 2021. For how to rig the systems and choose the gear, see How to Rope Solo; before your first time, learn in person from someone who knows how. Here we look only at what the AAC's recorded accidents have in common.
Case 1: Valkyrie, California Sierra, 2023. A climber was ascending a fixed rope with only one device. A sling from her top-rope solo setup got pulled into the device and jammed its cam, so the device never gripped the rope. She fell about 30 feet to the ground. The AAC's analysis: the error was using one device with no backup knot. She said it was the first time she had used only one device.
Case 2: Donner Summit, California, 2021. A climber who had used the same system for ten years went from his usual two devices to one that day, because it was windy and he wanted to get home. Near the top, the device failed to grip the rope. He free-fell about 50 feet; only when his foot struck a ledge did the device catch again. He ended up with a dislocated ankle and severe rope burns on both hands, and he wasn't wearing a helmet (AAC column, February 2023). Afterwards he wrote that none of those were good reasons, but in the moment he talked himself into it.
Case 3: Vedauwoo, Wyoming. A climber who had already top-rope soloed about 50–60 pitches that season was rushing after work. Just before starting he realized he had forgotten his gloves and detached a device to get them, and when he came back he didn't recheck the system. The two devices had jammed against each other and neither worked. He fell about 10 feet (AAC accident report). His own conclusion: complacency and haste were the main causes.
The three cases share three things:
- One device only, no backup knot, or two devices interfering so both fail.
- A rush that led to changing the usual routine.
- Familiarity with the system, so no recheck.
The third point mirrors the free solo accidents: the more familiar the system, the easier it is to skip the check.
Early soloing history in brief
Climbers in the early twentieth century were often effectively soloing, because ropes of the time offered little real protection. Wikipedia records that Paul Preuss fell 300 m to his death in 1913 while attempting a first ascent solo. A fuller history is outside this series.
To read what a soloist says in his own words, the climbing books knowledge map includes Honnold's memoir Alone on the Wall.
Practice: three scenarios
Answers are below each question. Think first, then check.
1. A friend says: "Soloing a familiar 5.6 is safer than an unfamiliar 5.11, right?"
Answer
AAC data shows free solo deaths often happen to experienced climbers on familiar moderate routes, like the 5.7 and 5.4 in the Flatirons. Familiarity lowers focus, and without a rope every small mistake has zero margin. "Safer" is only a comparison; it doesn't mean low risk. A foot slip on a 5.6 ends the same way as on a 5.11.
2. "Honnold said Taipei 101 was almost no risk, and he made it, so it really was safe."
Answer
One success doesn't prove the risk was low; it only proves nothing went wrong that time. Megos put it more precisely: technically it wasn't hard for Honnold, but without a rope the consequences are extreme. Risk is the probability of something going wrong times the consequence. In free soloing the consequence is almost always death, so even a very low probability can't be called close to zero.
3. You often top-rope solo alone at the crag and have used the same system for a long time. Today it's windy, you want to get home early, and you're thinking of leaving off one device.
Answer
This is almost a replay of the AAC's 2023 case: a familiar system, wind and a rush, a switch to one device, and a device that didn't grip the rope, followed by a 50-foot fall. The three cases share a single device, no backup or interfering devices, a rush that changed the routine, and familiarity that skipped the check. Today's conditions are exactly when you shouldn't change anything. If you don't want to rig it the usual way, don't climb.
Series recap
This series started with the overview, then covered deep water soloing, big wall and aid climbing, ice climbing, alpine climbing, then this post, and finally How to Rope Solo. The first four are directions you can train toward next. This one is a risk lesson that only makes sense after the others: the less protection you use, the less room you leave for mistakes. The next post maps the rope-solo failure modes onto the gear and pre-climb checks for each of the three approaches.
Update Log
- 2026-10-24: added part 6, How to Rope Solo; the opening, the rope-solo section and the series recap now link to it. Facts in this post were not re-checked.
References
- Free solo climbing (Wikipedia)
- The Prescription—Free Solo Fall (American Alpine Club, 2025-08)
- The Prescription—Free Solo Death (American Alpine Club, 2022-12)
- How Free Soloists Die, According to Alex Honnold (Suburban Mountaineer, 2019, summarizing Mark Synnott's The Impossible Climb)
- Skyscraper Live (2026) (Wikipedia)
- Honnold free solos Taipei 101: livestream sparks debate (DW Chinese, 2026-01, updated 25 January, in Mandarin)
- He Did It! Alex Honnold Scaled the Taipei Skyscraper as the World Looked On (Outside, 2026-01-24)
- 9 Interesting Stats From 210 Climbing Accidents Last Year (Climbing.com, 2025-09)
- Was Alex Honnold's Taipei 101 Ascent the Biggest Urban Free Solo in History? (Climbing.com, 2026-01)
- The Prescription—Top-Rope Solo (American Alpine Club, 2025-02)
- The Prescription—Top-Rope Soloing, February 2023 (American Alpine Club)
- Top-Rope Solo System Failure (Accidents in North American Climbing)
- Bouldering falls and ankle injuries
- Climbing books knowledge map