You may have thought he’d spend a few days relaxing on a beach, or at the very least visit the local health spa to soothe his aching forearm flexors and finger calluses. But no, the morning after Alex Honnold meticulously climbed all 1,667 feet of Taipei 101 for his Netflix special Skyscraper Live—yes, he did it without a safety rope—he boarded a flight from Taiwan back home to Las Vegas, Nevada. The roar of the crowds gathered at the base of the 101-story building still echoed in his ears, and the thrill of scaling its ten abstract metal dragons vibrated through his body. Yet Honnold and his wife, Sanni, had to return to their two daughters, June and Alice.
“The big thing was childcare—we had to get back home to our kids,” Honnold recently told Outside. “We left our babies at home.”
Skyscraper Live etched a new chapter into Honnold’s already storied career and expanded his celebrity in a way that even Free Solo, his Academy Award-winning 2016 documentary, could not. Camera crews, beaming images live around the world, showed Honnold’s eye-popping athleticism and his calm, jovial demeanor amid a life-and-death scenario. Overhead shots showed him pulling his body up the skyscraper like a ballet dancer 1,000 feet off of the sidewalk, no safety net required.
But the spectacle was simply one of many projects that Honnold has chosen to pursue. These days Honnold, 40, is a one-man media platform: he hosts two podcasts (Climbing Gold and Planet Visionaries), completes documentaries for National Geographic, and takes on big-wall ascents in Yosemite National Park and other famous crags across the country. He’s also now the host of a TV show, Get a Little Out There with Alex Honnold, which debuts Outside TV on February 26. In the latter program, Honnold takes viewers to different outdoor destinations in his new home state, Nevada, and shows how he spends his time solo, and with his family, at the campground and on the trail.
Outside recently caught up with Honnold to talk about Skyscraper Live, Get a Little Out There, and how, exactly, he balances his love for family, rock climbing, and danger.
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