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QUESTIONS FOR ALEX HONNOLD BEFORE HE SUCCESSFULLY CONQUERED THE TAIPEI 101

- STORY: ADAM SKOLNICK / NYT

Alex Honnold, the rock climber who scaled El Capitan without a rope in the Oscar-winning film Free Solo, swapped his usual stone slab for steel and glass last Sunday.

Untethered, he crawled up Taipei 101, a 101-storey skyscraper in Taiwan, wearing custom climbing shoes to gain better traction on the glass, a chalk bag to keep his sweaty grip from slipping and his signature red T-shirt. It was streamed live to a global audience on Netflix.

Although urban climbing, or "buildering", is a respected niche within the sport - one that comes with dedicated websites and underground guidebooks - it is typically done in the shadows, without permission. Honnold's attempt was sanctioned and sensationalised.

Even Tommy Caldwell, one of Honnold's closest climbing partners over the years, considered it "a media stunt" when he first heard about it, and it is fair to wonder why the 40-year-old Honnold did it.

One slip could have sent him tumbling to his death, and the stakes were higher this time. He's not some young climber living on his own in a van anymore.

He has a wife, Sanni McCandless Honnold, and two daughters under four.

I recently met Honnold at his compound on the wild western fringe of Las Vegas. Our conversation began on his back porch, moved into his electric pickup truck, which he gunned to more than 160kph, and continued between his attempts at one of the hardest routes on the limestone ceiling of Clear Light Cave, a sport climbing Mecca, where each successive effort was eventually snuffed out by full body failure.

It’s a ritual he has been performing twice a week to build upper body strength. Last Sunday, he conquered the striking 508m Taipei tower. He completed the climb in one hour and 31 minutes.

What was the inspiration behind the Taipei 101 climb?