Wallenda Prepares for Bigger Feat after Crossing the Canyon
The Grand Canyon is home of stellar views, unforgettable moments, and endless opportunities to test yourself. Like the many hikers, mountain bikers, and rafters that visit the Grand Canyon to test their skills and find the biggest thrills, Nik Wallenda visited the canyon to test his own skill at walking the tightrope. He crossed a gorge near the Grand Canyon back in 2013, walking 1,400 feet across a two-inch-thick wire with nothing but a pole to keep himself balanced and his own confidence and skill to keep him cool. Just a year before that, in 2012, he walked right across the Niagara Falls on a similar tightrope, and in 2015, at the Wisconsin State Fair, he’ll be attempting his longest walk yet: a 1,560-foot walk suspended 10 stories over a racetrack.
The event will be sponsored by Potawatomi Hotel & Casino and take place on August 11th at approximately 7 p.m. You can reserve a ticket for the show as early as March 31st, but if you can’t miss this event, don’t delay. Tickets may not last long as Wallenda prepares to break yet another world record for onlookers to see.
Wallenda’s legendary walk across the Little Colorado River Gorge was the latest in his lifetime of incredible feats. A seventh-generation tightrope performer, he completed that 1,400-foot walk in less than 23 minutes, suspended 1,500 feet over certain death the entire time. Wallenda does all of this without the benefit of a safety net or harness, meaning that the danger is very real and the stakes get higher every single time.
His very own “Grand Canyon Skywalk” began at 9:40 on June 23rd, 2013. After 11 minutes had passed, he had already made it across the halfway mark, but just two minutes later, the nation held its breath as he knelt down in an effort to maintain balance and calm the quickly-moving cable, gradually nudged into a dangerous oscillation by Wallenda’s movements and the windy conditions.
Conquering Niagara Falls was his life-long dream, and since then, he’s only gotten more and more ambitious. Why does he do it all? According to his own biography, he does it to prove that no matter how outlandish and impossible your dreams may seem, anything can be accomplished with enough courage, perseverance, and practice. That stun alone took a full two years to set up, and in those two years, Wallenda and his team managed to convince not one but two countries to change regulations that had banned daredevil stunts from the falls for the past 116 years. After all that had been taken care of, it was just a matter of groundbreaking engineering feats, meticulous geological surveying, and extremely detailed planning.
Wallenda’s other feats include…
- Proposing to his wife on a high wire in 1999
- Setting his first world record in 2001 for performing an 8-person pyramid on a high wire
- Completing the high wire walk in 2011 that killed his grandfather
- Hanging by his jaw from a helicopter
What is your most ambitious dream? How do you plan on accomplishing it? What’s the most terrifying thing you’ve ever done? Let us know in the comments section below!
