Butterflies
Free Soloing
The first handhold is always the quietest moment.
I settle my fingers into the gap between two steel panels, feel the familiar geometry of metal against skin. Taipei sprawls beneath me, a circuit board of light and motion, but I don’t look down. Not yet. The building rises above me like a bamboo stalk sectioned into eight segments, each one a problem to solve, a series of moves I’ve rehearsed in my mind for six months.
I pull myself up. The steel is warm from the afternoon sun.
This is easier than El Capitan. People don’t understand that. They see the height and assume difficulty, but height is just a number. What matters is the rock, or in this case, the architecture. Taipei 101 was designed with setbacks every eight floors, decorative spurs jutting out like the nodes of bamboo. Each one is a rest point, a place to reset. The holds between them are generous, the angles forgiving.
I move up another three feet. My breathing stays even.
“He’s at forty meters,” the camera operator said, adjusting her drone controller. The feed showed Alex as a red speck against green-tinted glass, impossibly small. “Jesus Christ.”
In the production tent at the base of the tower, three Netflix executives sat before a bank of monitors. Sarah Chen had stopped breathing somewhere around the twenty-meter mark and hadn’t started again. Beside her, Marcus drummed his fingers against the table in a rhythm that matched nothing.
“The liability waiver,” he said. “Legal went over it again?”
“Four times.” Sarah’s voice came out flat. “He signed everything. His estate signed everything.”
On the monitor, Alex reached up, found a grip, pulled. The motion looked effortless, almost lazy.
“Why does he make it look like that?” The third executive, a man named Torres who’d flown in from Los Angeles specifically for this, leaned forward. “Like he’s climbing a ladder.”
The camera operator’s voice came through the comm. “Because for him, it basically is.”
I pause at the first setback, 八 painted in red on a maintenance door beside me. Eight floors. I’m not even breathing hard.
A helicopter circles to my left, keeping its distance. The downwash doesn’t reach me here, but I can feel the pressure change when it banks. Inside, someone is filming. Below, someone else is probably praying.
I think about the route ahead. The next section is the longest unbroken stretch, twelve floors of glass and steel before the next setback. I’ve studied the architectural drawings until I could see them with my eyes closed. I know where every bolt sits, every seam where panels meet.
The wind picks up slightly. Maybe eight miles per hour. Nothing.
I start climbing again.
The girl was seven years old and she’d stopped eating her shaved ice.
“Mama,” she said, pointing at the massive screen erected in the plaza. “Is that man going to fall?”
Her mother pulled her closer, one hand on the stroller where her younger brother slept, oblivious. “No, baby. He’s a professional.”
“But there’s no rope.”
On the screen, the climber moved upward with mechanical precision. The camera angle switched, showing the dizzying drop beneath him, and the crowd in the plaza made a collective sound, somewhere between a gasp and a moan.
“He’s done this before,” the mother said, though she wasn’t sure if that was true. “Many times.”
The father stood slightly apart, phone raised, recording the screen that was recording the climber. “This is insane,” he muttered. “This is absolutely insane.”
The girl watched the tiny figure on the screen reach up, pull, reach up, pull. She’d seen her father climb the ladder to clean the gutters once, and he’d made her mother hold the base the entire time.
“He’s not even scared,” she said.
The fifty-second floor. The numbers count themselves somewhere in the back of my mind, but I’m not really tracking them. I’m tracking the texture of the steel under my fingers, the angle of my hips, the position of my feet.
This is what people never understand about free soloing. They think it’s about conquering fear. It’s not. It’s about the accurate assessment of risk. The fear comes from uncertainty, and I’ve removed the uncertainty. I know exactly what this building will do, exactly what my body will do. The gap between those two certainties is where I live.
A gust of wind, slightly stronger. I wait, pressed flat against the glass. Someone inside the building has noticed me. I see her face, pale and round, mouthing something I can’t hear. I wave. She doesn’t wave back.
The wind settles. I keep climbing.
In the production tent, Sarah Chen had her hand over her mouth.
“How much longer?” Torres asked.
“Four more sections.” The camera operator’s voice was steady, professional. “Maybe fifteen minutes.”
On the central monitor, Alex had become little more than a speck now. The telephoto lens caught his face in profile as he reached for the next hold, and Sarah searched for something there, some sign of strain or doubt. She found nothing. He might have been reaching for a coffee cup.
“The viewers,” Marcus said, checking his tablet. “We just passed two million concurrent.”
“They’re not watching because they think he’ll make it,” Torres said quietly.
Nobody responded to that.
I can see the observation deck now. The spire above it catches the late afternoon light, and for a moment, I let myself feel something like satisfaction. Not pride; pride is dangerous. Just the quiet recognition that the problem is almost solved.
One more setback. One more section of steel and glass, and then I’ll stand where no one has stood before, at least not like this, not with nothing but air between me and the city below.
I reach the final spur, a decorative projection maybe two feet wide. I settle my weight onto it, let my arms rest for a moment.
And then I turn.
The Taiwanese skyline stretches out before me, towers and temples and the distant mountains fading into haze. The sun sits low in the west, painting everything gold. I’ve seen views from higher places, from Yosemite’s granite walls, from Patagonian spires, but this one is different. This one belongs to everyone watching.
I take a breath. I let them see me seeing it.
Beneath my right foot, a bolt shifts. A millimeter, maybe less. The spur moves with it, a tremor so slight that only I could feel it.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe.
The bolt holds.
Or does it?