“You just, like, freaking go,” Honnold said while appearing on a podcast
Credit: Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know/Instagram
NEED TO KNOW
- Alex Honnold shared how climbers handle bathroom breaks mid-climb, emphasizing minimizing impact on nature and others
- Honnold gained fame for free soloing Yosemite’s El Capitan, a feat featured in the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo
- He recently free soloed Taiwan’s Taipei 101 skyscraper in a 1,667-foot climb that was aired live on Netflix
Alex Honnold, the world-famous free solo climber who recently scaled a skyscraper in Taiwan, revealed how he handles bathroom breaks mid-climb.
Honnold, 40, shared the intel while appearing on the Feb. 25 episode of Hasan Minhaj’s podcast, Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know.
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“You just, like, freaking go,” Honnold said. “But you’re in nature, so it doesn't matter. You just make sure you're not impacting other climbers.”
“I mean, there's been, like, one-handed hanging on the side of a cliff, taking a dump … I mean, you know, when it happens, it happens. It’s better than pooping your pants,” he added.
Honnold rose to international fame as one of the world’s most daring climbers, known for his expertise in free solo climbing, which entails scaling massive rock faces without ropes or safety gear.
He successfully free soloed Yosemite National Park’s iconic El Capitan, a nearly 3,000-foot vertical rock formation, in 2017. The feat is widely regarded as one of the most extraordinary achievements in modern climbing, and the climb was captured in the Oscar–winning documentary Free Solo.
The husband and dad of two made history again on Jan. 25 when he free soloed Taipei 101, a 1,667-foot skyscraper in Taiwan, without ropes or safety equipment. The climb was aired live on Netflix in a special called Skyscraper Live. The climb took him an hour and 31 minutes, per the BBC.
Credit: I-Hwa Cheng / AFP via Getty
And while Honnold was compensated by Netflix for the special, he said he would have done it for free.
“If there was no TV program and the building gave me permission to go do the thing, I would do the thing because I know I can, and it’d be amazing,“ he said while speaking to The New York Times ahead of the climb.
“I mean, just sitting by yourself on the very top of the spire is insane,” he continued. “And so, you know, if there wasn’t the whole spectacle around it, and I just had the opportunity to go do it by myself, I’d be fine with that.”
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In his mind, he said that what he was really getting paid for was the “spectacle” of the live event.
“I’m climbing the building for free,” he added.
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