If you think you’re daring, you should talk to Nik Wallenda.
On the night of November 2, Wallenda made an incredible two-part highwire walk between three skyscrapers in Chicago. He completed the walk without the security of a harness or net, and that’s not even the craziest part about this endeavor. For the first leg of the walk, Wallenda’s wire was strung between the 588-foot Marina Tower West and the 671-foot Leo Burnett building, meaning that not only was he walking on a wire, but the wire had a 19-degree incline. The second walk, between the two Marina City towers, had no incline, and so to make things more interesting, Wallenda wore a blindfold. All told, his incredible stunt lasted about seven minutes.
The stunt drew thousands of spectators, including Wallenda’s wife and three children, and was aired around the world on the Discovery Channel–with a 10 second delay, just in case.
Wallenda on the first walk, with an inclined wire.
Chicago is known as the Windy City, and it continued to live up to that name on the night of Wallenda’s walk. After the walk, he described how he could feel the wire wobbling under his feet. That might sound terrifying, but Wallenda brushed it off, saying that his grip on the wire was sure, and that he remained confident. He did, however, admit that looking down from 600 feet in the air has a certain “intimidation factor.”
People in the Marina City towers watch anxiously.
If you look closely, you can see the way the wire is inclined.
This isn’t the first time Wallenda has wowed audiences the world over with his death-defying feats. Last June, he tightrope-walked across the Grand Canyon, some 1,500 feet in the air. And he’s been doing this for much of his life. Wallenda comes from the long line of “Flying Wallendas,” a family circus troupe that goes back seven generations, and began walking tightropes professionally at the age of 13. Technically, he’s been on the highwire since even before his birth–his mother, Delilah, also a tightrope walker, performed stunts while she was six months pregnant with him.
