Daredevil Nik Wallenda has completed a breath-taking tightrope walk that took him a quarter mile over the Little Colorado River Gorge in northeastern Arizona.
Wallenda performed the stunt late on Sunday on a 2-inch-thick steel cable, 1,500 feet above the river on the Navajo Nation near the Grand Canyon.
He took just more than 22 minutes, pausing and crouching twice as winds whipped around him and the rope swayed.
‘Thank you Lord. Thank you for calming that cable, God,’ he said about 13 minutes into the walk.
Wallenda didn’t wear a harness and stepped slowly and steady throughout, murmuring prayers to Jesus almost constantly along the way. He jogged and hopped the last few steps.
Winds blowing across the gorge had been expected to be around 30 mph. Wallenda told Discovery after the walk that the winds were at times ‘unpredictable’ and that dust had accumulated on his contact lenses.
‘It was way more windy, and it took every bit of me to stay focused the entire time,’ he said
The ranger Elmer Phillips said Wallenda appeared to be walking like any normal person would on a sidewalk. But he said he got a little nervous when Wallenda stopped the first time.
‘Other than that, a pretty amazing feat. I know I wouldn’t even attempt something like that,’ Phillips said. ‘Very nicely done.’
Wallenda told reporters after the walk that he hoped his next stunt would be a tightrope walk between the Empire State building and the Chrysler building in New York. But he said he would give up tightrope walking altogether if his wife and children ever asked him
Sunday’s stunt comes a year after he traversed Niagara Falls earning a seventh Guinness world record.
Wallenda wore a microphone and two cameras, one looking down on the dry Little Colorado River bed and one facing straight ahead. His leather shoes with an elk-skin sole helped him keep a grip on the steel cable as he moved across.
The event was broadcast live on the Discovery Channel with a ten-second delay. He was watched by 1.5million people compared to the 8million who watched Felix Baumgartner jump from space.
His parents — both highwire walkers — used to ram home the importance of being prepared for the unexpected, pelting him with pine cones as he swayed on a practice wire in their garden, or coming up behind him and shaking the wire.
His father and mentor, Terry, was the reassuring voice in his earpiece when Wallenda stepped out over the abyss.
Still, Nik admits that some eventualities can never be foreseen out on the wire. He was once stung by a bee and has had birds land on his balancing pole. Out in the Arizona desert, that could be a vulture.
As to how he copes with the extraordinary mental strain, Wallenda, an unshowy performer who usually does his walks in shorts and T-shirt, doesn’t shed much light on the subject.
It’s basically all he knows, he says. There’s certainly an otherworldly quality to a man who claims to get ‘very peaceful’ out on the wire.
In the past, Wallenda has hung from his teeth from a helicopter, and ridden a motorcycle up a steel cable. But he doesn’t like being called a daredevil.
‘I do consider what I do an art,’ he says. ‘And I consider a daredevil more of somebody who says: “I’m going to do something that’s never been done before but I haven’t trained for it.” I train and train and train and over-train for this.’
His wife Erendira, 32, is another wire walker
He got down on one knee to propose when they were both on a high wire!!!. But then who else would tolerate a husband with such a career?
She and the children watched him succeed in his breath-taking stunt on Sunday night.
They always say a family prayer, but there is no real ritual before his walks, he insists.
‘I’m not superstitious. I give my wife and kids a hug and a kiss, and say: “See you in a few minutes” — just like I do when I go out to get groceries
source:::::mailonline.com
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