In 1996 doctors told me I wouldn’t walk again unaided, but in 2022 I took the record for the most Everest summits by a non-Sherpa

I grew up in Slough, Berkshire, in a bungalow beside a farm. My father was a scout leader, and I was always outside, building dams and dens, sleeping out and hiding in trees. In my teens, family holidays were two weeks in Wales. At home, nature was my playground.

When I was 17, a school friend took me to a climbing wall where he was a regular. I loved the physicality of it and trying to work out where to put my hands and feet next. We would go there twice a week. In sixth form, we headed to the south coast in Dorset for my first real climbing outing. The waves were crashing and it felt scary and exhilarating. I thought it was magical.

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© Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The Guardian

© Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The Guardian

© Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The Guardian

Rob Martin was stranded for hours before rescuers reached him. He recalled thinking: “One wrong move now, and that’s it. I die.”

It was clear it was broken. I could feel the bones grinding together as the paramedics strapped me to a gurney

Growing up in Utah, I was so active that my parents nicknamed me “The Blur”. My older siblings introduced me to rock climbing while I was still at primary school. By the time I was 15, I was hauling myself up cliff faces.

One summer’s day in 2014, when I was 17, my friends and I went paddleboarding on a lake. My friend Trevor and I decided to climb one of the rocky boulders overlooking the water, and jump in.

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© Photograph: Josh Hawkins/The Guardian

© Photograph: Josh Hawkins/The Guardian

© Photograph: Josh Hawkins/The Guardian

Authorities in California said he died in a climbing accident. He set a record in 2024 for climbing El Capitan’s Lurking Fear route in under three hours.

© Loren Elliott for The New York Times

Improve your mountain skills by day and party by night at the Arc’teryx Alpine Academy in Chamonix

After a day spent hiking across the Col d’Entrèves glacier, a sugar hit is required. I descend on the cable car and join the queue at the ice-cream counter. Above me, surrounded by jagged peaks, looms the huge white figure of Mont Blanc, serene and pure against a brilliant blue sky. Although it’s late afternoon, people are still heading up the mountain, and there are two clear groups. On one side are the tourists, who are about to be lifted into unfamiliar frozen realms at 3,375 metres (11,072ft), hoping to grab a picture and return. Mixed among them are the weathered faces of mountain experts: hikers confidently heading for a high-altitude hut, or climbers with coils of rope.

How many of those tourists, I wonder, are wishing they could be mountaineers, secretly regretting the twists of fate that kept them away from that path? But all is not lost. The aspiring adventurer, no matter what age or background, can begin the journey to competence in the mountains. The annual mountain festival I am attending aims to facilitate that by offering the chance to gain hands-on experience with experts.

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© Photograph: Anette Andersson

© Photograph: Anette Andersson

© Photograph: Anette Andersson

Climbers have used the 70-pound rock, which they call Portable, to practice balancing and gripping. Months after it went missing, it was found 19 hours away.

Witnessing the free climber’s ascent of the Taipei 101 without ropes on Skyscraper Live was an astonishing experience. But beneath panicked viewers’ sweaty palms, there was a queasy truth about the future of television

Well, have your balls descended back out of your body yet? Netflix’s Skyscraper Live has been and gone, and it may well qualify as the single most stressful viewing experience on record. Alex Honnold’s unassisted ascent of the 508 metre Taipei 101 was an absolutely extraordinary achievement. Whether or not it represents the future of television, though, is a completely different matter.

Honnold’s work is already well-known. As the star of Free Solo – a feature documentary once again so nerve-racking that the only way to comfortably enjoy it was under the influence of industrial sphincter relaxants – he has long been the poster boy of people climbing up stuff without ropes.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix © 2026

© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix © 2026

© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix © 2026

US climber takes an hour and half to scale one of Asia’s tallest buildings without ropes or a harness

The US rock climber Alex Honnold climbed one of Asia’s tallest skyscrapers without ropes or a harness on Sunday, fulfilling an ambition that began more than a decade ago and which he hoped would inspire people to pursue their own challenges because “time is finite”.

Honnold, who starred in the 2019 Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, ascended the 508-metre (1,667ft) Taipei 101 using the skyscraper’s horizontal metal beams to pull himself up with his bare hands. The challenge had originally been scheduled to take place on Saturday but was postponed because of rain.

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© Photograph: ChiangYing-ying/AP

© Photograph: ChiangYing-ying/AP

© Photograph: ChiangYing-ying/AP

The Free Solo star will attempt to climb the 1,667ft skyscraper without ropes in a live Netflix broadcast, drawing awe, ethical concern and global attention

Alex Honnold has spent the past three months training for this moment: free soloing – climbing without ropes or a harness – one of Asia’s tallest skyscrapers, Taipei 101. It is an ambition that began more than a decade ago and is now close to being realized.

The climb will be broadcast globally on Skyscraper Live, Netflix’s latest foray into live sports programming. The star of the 2019 Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo insists that climbing Taipei 101 will feel no different from any other of his ascents.

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© Photograph: Corey Rich/Netflix/NETFLIX © 2025

© Photograph: Corey Rich/Netflix/NETFLIX © 2025

© Photograph: Corey Rich/Netflix/NETFLIX © 2025

Alex Honnold again will be ascending without ropes. In an interview he considers the impact on his family if something were to go wrong.

© Mark Abramson for The New York Times

The 33-year-old hit rain, lightning, snow and ice in Yosemite – and still became the first woman to ascend the Platinum route

Big-wall climber Sasha DiGiulian had spent the last three years preparing for a career-defining ascent of one of the most challenging routes up the face of the famed granite cliff known as El Capitán in Yosemite national park. All she and her partner needed was a two-week window of favorable weather. They appeared to get one on 3 November.

DiGiulian felt jolts of fear during her training, she said, induced by the sudden 2,600ft of exposure she felt as she rappelled down to practice on the most challenging sections of the iconic California peak. But her nerves calmed when ascending from the base, allowing her to focus more intently on the moves and completing each pitch – a measurement that references a length of the rope that climbers use to secure themselves to the rock.

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© Photograph: Pablo Durana/Red Bull Content Pool

© Photograph: Pablo Durana/Red Bull Content Pool

© Photograph: Pablo Durana/Red Bull Content Pool