Nik Wallenda Walks Across Grand Canyon On 2-Inch-Wide Tightrope
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- The self-proclaimed "King of the High Wire" completes another daring tightrope walk.
He walked across water in Baltimore--well, above it, really---but now Nik Wallenda has done the unthinkable. He walked across the Grand Canyon on a 2-inch-wide high wire.
Mary Bubala reports the world was watching.
Fourteen-hundred feet across and 1,500 feet straight down, Wallenda walked across the Grand Canyon on a high wire, wearing no safety harness and it was broadcast live.
At one point, the wind kicked up and the death-defying stunt became even more heart-stopping.
"I'm not liking it," Wallenda said. "Winds are way worse than I expected."
The seventh generation daredevil stopped twice, kneeling to regain his balance and composure. It's something he did during his walk over the Inner Harbor last year.
"I looked up and was talking to a friend of mine in the basket, and I slipped and he turned pale white and freaked out," Wallenda said of that Inner Harbor walk. "He said, `Are you OK? Are you OK?'"
He was OK, and Wallenda added Baltimore to his amazing high wire accomplishments.
It's in his blood. His great-grandfather Carl Wallenda put the Flying Wallendas together in 1922, but in 1978, he fell 10 stories to his death in Puerto Rico. That was ten months before Nik Wallenda was born.
"My great-grandfather Carl Wallenda said, `life is on the wire and everything is just waiting.' This is life," Nik Wallenda said.
With his life on the line and cheating death, he ran the final steps over the Grand Canyon, hopped down and kissed the ground, then hugged his wife and family.
"I did it," he said.
Nik Wallenda did it again, one step at a time. He conquered the Grand Canyon like no one else ever has.
It took him just 22 minutes to cross the wire, slightly shorter than his walk across Niagara Falls and double the time it took him to walk across the Inner Harbor.
Winds were whipping at times more than 40 miles an hour.
As for what's next, the 34-year-old Wallenda reportedly wants to walk a wire between the Empire State and Chrysler buildings in New York City.
