(Jason Elias/Discovery Channel)
Nik Wallenda’s childhood was not like yours. While most people played in a yard or a park, tossing a ball or riding a bike, young Nik and his family would have chicken fights while poised atop a taut, solid wire.
Such is life when you’re part of the world’s greatest wire-walking clan.
The Flying Wallendas, founded by Nik’s great-grandfather Karl Wallenda, was a legendary high-wire act that pulled off incredible stunts hundreds of feet in the air.
Carrying on the family tradition, Nik Wallenda, 34, will walk across a 1,400-feet stretch of the Grand Canyon tonight on a two-inch-thick wire stretched 1,500 feet in the air with no safety net below. The spot Wallenda’s chosen in the National Park is above the Little Colorado River Gorge, on the East Rim Drive and quite a distance from the Grand Canyon Village. The event, “Skywire Live with Nik Wallenda,” will be carried live on the Discovery Channel tonight.
For Wallenda, walking the wire is both his birthright, and as natural as breathing.
“I saw it as normal, because it was normal for my family,” says Wallenda, who crossed Niagara Falls on a wire last year. “There are 15 of us [in the family] that still walk the wire. So growing up, there were tons of us walking it all day long, and I was the coolest kid in the neighborhood.”
Wallenda learned early how to prepare for the extreme weather conditions he might face on a real wire walk when his family threw objects his way during practice runs.
“Pine cones, a football, a soccer ball, whatever,” he says. “They didn’t throw it at me — they threw it by me, to distract me. They would also sneak up behind me and shake the wire — anything to try to distract me so they knew that when I was up high, when it was a dangerous situation, I’d stay focused.”
The Wallendas understand the importance of focus, since not every Wallenda has made it out of the family business alive. During a walk in 1962 in Detroit, their seven-person pyramid act collapsed, leaving two family members dead and a third paralyzed. And in 1978, family patriarch Karl fell to his death on a walk in Puerto Rico that was being taped for television.
To prepare for whatever dangers he may face above the Canyon, Wallenda’s team rigged a wire the same length as the one for the Grand Canyon event (which he estimates will dip around 17 feet during his 25-to-30 minute walk), but much closer to the ground, at a rowing facility in Sarasota, Florida. Wind machines from air boats were then used to simulate winds that could reach 45-to-55 miles per hour or even higher. (Wallenda will rethink the walk if winds are at the top end of that spectrum or higher before he starts. Also, he’ll walk in the rain, but won’t if there’s lightning within 15 miles.)
Most of his equipment is custom-made. For balance, he’ll hold a 28-foot-long, 45-pound pole that he crafted himself, and his shoes are specially made for him by his mother.
“It’s basically an Indian moccasin with a cowhide or leather upper. They lace up, just like a tennis shoe,” he says. “The leather molds to your feet, and the bottom is a thin elk skin. I use elk skin because I can feel the wire through it, but it actually becomes grippy instead of slippery when the wire gets wet.”
Another key part of preparing for this walk is envisioning how everything will go just right.
“When I’m training, I’ll visualize myself over the Grand Canyon,” says Wallenda, who will wear two hi-def cameras on his chest for the walk — one looking down, and one looking straight ahead.
“As I’m walking that [practice] wire, I’ll be thinking, ‘OK, I’m at this point, [now] I’m at this point.’ Then when I’m walking over the Canyon, I’ll be putting myself back in training, going, ‘You did this down low, you did it with the winds.’ It’s about calming those nerves and putting those fires out in your brain.”
Wallenda’s father, Terry Troffer, will be on hand, talking to Wallenda via in-ear headsets. If anything goes wrong, Troffer can deploy trolleys from either end of the wire for his son to grab onto. “The trolley is what we call a man basket,” he says. “It’s large enough to hold two people. It would roll out and get to Nik in under 60 seconds. He can hang on for probably fifteen minutes, easily, so it’s well within the range of safety.”
Still, Wallenda can never take danger for granted.
“People ask what the last thing I do is before walking the wire,” says Wallenda. “I give my wife and kids a hug and a kiss, and say, ‘I’ll see you in a few minutes.’ I never say goodbye, because I think words are strong. We all have a final day. None of us know when it is, but we all have one.”
The possibility that walking the wire will bring that day closer is never a factor for him in his decision to do what he does. Wallenda makes it clear that wire-walking is too much a part of him to let a little thing like the potential 1,500-foot-drop he faces discourage him from fulfilling his destiny.
“My great-grandfather said, ‘Life is on the wire. Everything else is just waiting,’” says Wallenda. “I don’t know how to describe it to you other than, this is my life. It’s not a career. It’s not an occupation. It’s really my life.”
SKYWIRE LIVE WITH NIK WALLENDA
Tonight, 8 p.m., Discovery