Who is Alex Honnold? 8 Things to Know About the Rock Climber After His Historic Taipei 101 Free Solo Climb

It's all about the climb for Alex Honnold.

The world-renowned rock climber was born to Charles Honnold and Dierdre Wolownick on August 17, 1985. He graduated from Mira Loma High School and later attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied civil engineering.

Alex eventually dropped out to chase climbing full time.

In a 2015 interview with The New York Times, Alex said he and Dierdre spent "like, a million hours" in gyms around California when he began climbing at the age of 5.

He also told Life Beyond Sport, "They [Alex's parents] assumed I would like it because I'd always been climbing in trees and buildings and things, so I mean I've kind of been climbing my whole life, I've done nothing but climb ever since."

After training in climbing gyms, he started competing in national and international youth climbing championships.

As a rock climber and environmental steward, Alex lived in a van "basically wherever the weather is good" for a decade.

"I love being able to follow good conditions all over. And be relatively comfortable as I do it. And so that pretty much necessitates living in a car … If I could, like, miraculously teleport a house from place to place, I'd prefer to live in a nice comfortable house," he said in a GQ video published in 2020.

In 2017, Alex gave Outside a tour of his 2016 Dodge Ram Promaster, which he called his "home."

Alex made history when he became the first person to free solo El Capitan in California's Yosemite National Park in 2017.

His journey was featured in the award-winning 2018 documentary, Free Solo.

When asked what it was like "to do something that no one else on Earth has ever done," Alex shared, "It's satisfying, but the thing is nobody else is really playing the game of free solo climbing, so it's easy to win when no one else plays, you know? When you're just playing by yourself, anything you do is going to be something that has never been done before. It's not just free soloing El Cap, I think I've done something like 35 or 43 solos that were the first time they'd been done, or they were new in some way."

Alex's mother, Dierdre, became the oldest woman to climb El Capitan in 2017. She broke her own record on her 70th birthday several years later.

"Climbing El Cap at 70 takes its toll, physically, mentally, emotionally. I'm not 'down' yet. Not sure I ever will be, completely," the matriarch said of her historic ascent.

Alex expanded his reach when he founded the Honnold Foundation in 2012. The environmental nonprofit works to expand global access to solar energy, partnering with 44 communities in 17 countries in 2021 alone.

Alex began dating his fellow climber Sanni McCandless after meeting during his 2015 book tour. They announced their engagement in 2019 and got married the following year.

Alex and Sanni are parents to their two children: June, born in 2022, and Alice Summer, born in 2024.

In a 2024 interview with Page Six, he said fatherhood will not stop him from pursuing the dangerous profession.

"One of my friends, Tommy Caldwell, who is also a professional climber, often quips — it's not quite a joke; he's being serious — he didn't want to die before he had kids, and now he does have kids, he still doesn't want to die," he said. "As a climber, I've always had a close relationship with risk; risk management. You're always thinking these things through quite a lot, and having kids, it not like it suddenly changed my calculus around it. I still don't want to die doing this activity."

Elsewhere in the conversation, the father-of-two said that, while he will encourage his kids to climb, he will not push them toward free soloing.

"I wouldn't discourage them, either. If it winds up being their passion, and if they climb long enough and well enough, and they learn how to manage that, that would be fine," he continued.

On January 25 at 10:43 a.m. local time, Alex successfully reached the top of Taiwan's iconic skyscraper, Taipei 101.

"It's incredible," he told Tudum after his ascent. "You spend so long thinking about it and imagining that it's possible, but then to actually do it always feels different."

The climb, however, made headlines after Alex confirmed he was paid "less than [his] agent aspired to."

"I mean, I would do 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. I mean, just sitting by yourself on the very top of the spire is insane," he told The New York Times in an interview published on January 23.

He pointed out, "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. I would do that, but in this case, there is a spectacle. I'm not getting paid to climb the building. I'm getting paid for the spectacle. I'm climbing the building for free."

According to Alex, what he received was an "embarrassingly small amount," explaining, "You know, Major League Baseball players get like $170 million contracts. Like, someone you haven't even heard of and that nobody cares about."

While he did not disclose the exact amount he received, sources told The New York Times he was paid "mid-six figures" to do the dangerous ascent.