image from Alex's website
There is a tendency, when talking about extraordinary feats, to focus on the spectacle—the height, the danger, the person brave enough to attempt it. When Alex Honnold climbed Taipei 101, much of the conversation followed this familiar pattern. A skyscraper instead of a cliff. Urban geometry instead of granite. Gravity unchanged.
But what fascinated me most was not the building, nor even the climber. It was the shoes.
Specifically, the pair of climbing shoes that made contact with glass, metal seams, and architectural edges never meant to be touched by human hands—much less trusted with a human life.
Honnold wore climbing shoes designed not for spectacle, but for precision. Shoes built for friction. Sensitivity. Honesty. Models like the TC Pro—developed by La Sportiva—are not flashy. They are stiff enough to stand on nothing, yet sensitive enough to feel everything. They do not promise comfort. They promise truth.
During his recent free solo of the Taipei 101 skyscraper, Alex Honnold wore custom-made La Sportiva climbing shoes. The shoes were specifically designed for the ascent on glass and steel surfaces and featured a softer rubber than standard climbing shoes to provide better grip on the slippery building materials.
Base Model: The custom shoes were based on either the TC Pro or possibly the Skwama model, but with significant modifications.
Customization: The primary modification was the use of a softer, yellow rubber compound, better suited for urban surfaces than typical rock climbing.
Appearance: They were all yellow in color, which also served as a psychological confidence booster during the climb.
And that matters, because climbing shoes are not footwear in the conventional sense. They are instruments. They translate intent into contact. Every millimeter of rubber becomes a conversation between body and surface. On a mountain, that surface is rock. On Taipei 101, it was something far stranger—industrial, polished, indifferent.
What made this ascent remarkable was not just the location, but the mismatch. Skyscrapers are designed to repel touch. They are smooth, vertical assertions of control. Climbing them exposes their unintended vulnerabilities—edges where panels meet, seams where materials overlap. These are not flaws. They are consequences.
Honnold’s shoes had to find meaning in those consequences.
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| image from NPR |
Unlike hiking boots, climbing shoes are intentionally uncomfortable. They compress the foot, curl the toes, and strip away padding. This is not cruelty; it is clarity. Pain sharpens awareness. It eliminates distraction. The shoe becomes less a barrier and more an extension of the nervous system.
In an ascent like Taipei 101, that sensitivity becomes crucial. The rubber must grip surfaces that were never tested for friction. The climber must trust that what feels secure is secure. There is no margin for optimism. Only feedback.
What’s striking is how little technology intervenes. No motors. No smart sensors. No automation. Just a human foot, a thin layer of rubber, and gravity doing what it has always done. In an age obsessed with innovation, the climb was almost stubbornly analog.
This is where Honnold’s philosophy reveals itself. He does not romanticize danger. He reduces it. Every piece of gear, including the shoes, exists to remove uncertainty—not to create drama. The goal is not thrill, but control. And that control is quiet.
The shoes don’t look heroic. They don’t announce the feat. If anything, they disappear into the act itself. But without them—without the years of design refinement, rubber chemistry, and structural discipline—the climb would not exist. There is something instructive about that.
We often attribute success to boldness, to courage, to personality. But beneath every extraordinary act is a foundation of mundane precision. Equipment chosen carefully. Systems tested repeatedly. Small decisions made correctly, over and over again.
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| image from NPR |
The shoes remind us that greatness rarely stands on spectacle alone. It stands on preparation. On respect for physics. On an understanding that even the most daring acts are built from details.
In the end, Alex Honnold did not conquer Taipei 101. He negotiated with it. And the shoes—quiet, unforgiving, precise—were his most honest negotiators. They didn’t carry him upward.
They simply refused to let him lie to himself about where he stood.
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