{"id":133393,"date":"2026-06-15T14:23:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T20:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/utah-canyon-base-jump-kills-2-including-extreme-athlete-who-performed-with-madonna\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T14:23:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T20:23:15","slug":"utah-canyon-base-jump-kills-2-including-extreme-athlete-who-performed-with-madonna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/utah-canyon-base-jump-kills-2-including-extreme-athlete-who-performed-with-madonna\/","title":{"rendered":"Utah canyon BASE jump kills 2, including extreme athlete who performed with Madonna"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"U.S.
U.S. slackliner Andy Lewis, of California, balances on a slackline, July 23, 2014 in Bangkok, Thailand. (Sakchai Lalit\/Associated Press file)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A weekend BASE jumping accident in a Utah canyon killed two people, one of them a daredevil athlete best known for performing onstage with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities said.<\/p>\n

The sheriff’s office in Grand County, Utah, confirmed one of the dead was Andy Lewis, an extreme athlete known for feats in BASE jumping<\/a>, a dangerous sport that involves parachuting to the ground after jumping from a tall fixed object such as a building, a bridge or a desert cliff overlooking a deep canyon.<\/p>\n

In BASE jumping circles, Lewis had a huge following and a reputation for pushing the envelope \u2014 leaping into tighter spaces or deploying his parachute later than his peers would dare, said John McEvoy, a BASE jumping instructor in Twin Falls, Idaho, who has jumped with Lewis.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy said. \u201cBut then he would take an incredible amount of risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis’ other sport made him to overnight celebrity, thanks to Madonna <\/strong><\/div>\n

Lewis was also a prominent figure in the niche sports of slacklining and tricklining, which combine elements of high-wire walking with aerial acrobatics \u2014 sometimes at perilous heights.<\/p>\n

Lewis went from obscure athlete to overnight celebrity when he appeared onstage in Madonna\u2019s 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. Dressed in a Roman toga, Lewis bounced and executed tricks on his inch-wide line like it was a trampoline while Madonna sang behind him.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,\u201d Lewis said soon afterward in an appearance on Conan O\u2019Brien\u2019s late night show.<\/p>\n

Emergency responders were dispatched Sunday to a report of people injured in a BASE jumping attempt at Mineral Bottom, a remote desert area near the Utah-Colorado line, according to the sheriff’s office. Lewis and an unidentified 50-year-old man died at the scene, the sheriff\u2019s office said in a news release.<\/p>\n

Sheriff’s Lt. Al Cymbaluk confirmed to The Associated Press that it was Lewis the extreme athlete who died. He said he had no further details on the fatal accident.<\/p>\n

BASE jumping is far more dangerous than skydiving<\/strong><\/div>\n

Though there’s no official tally of BASE jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website BASEaddict.com<\/a> shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981 \u2014 including 30 people killed last year. Prominent deaths include BASE jumper Dean Potter<\/a> and his climbing partner, Graham Hunt, who were killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight in California’s Yosemite National Park.<\/p>\n

A study focused on BASE jumping in Norway<\/a>, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE jumping carried risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.<\/p>\n

Lewis openly acknowledged the sport\u2019s inherent danger.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it\u2019s like a normal thing,\u201d Lewis told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.<\/p>\n

Lewis owned BASE Jump Moab, a business that offered excursions to inexperienced customers using tandem jumps, in which the customer was harnessed to a guide wearing the parachute.<\/p>\n

Sheriff’s spokesperson Cymbaluk said he didn’t know if Lewis and the other man killed were performing a tandem jump.<\/p>\n

Tandem BASE jumping carries additional risk because it straps together two people, one of whom generally lacks experience, under a single parachute, McEvoy said. But because they involve novices, they also tend to be the most low-risk, basic types of jumps.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin BASE, it\u2019s a very controversial topic,\u201d McEvoy said. “There\u2019s a lot of people who say it’s the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing: `No, we\u2019re giving people the experience of their lives.’\u201d<\/p>\n

No one immediately returned phone, text and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.<\/p>\n

Lewis won four straight world championships in competitive slacklining from 2008 through 2011. Lewis set a Guinness World Record for slackline surfing, swaying his feet side to side in a rocking motion that mimics surfing, while keeping his balance above China’s Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011.<\/p>\n

In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) above the Nevada desert.<\/p>\n

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Andy
Andy Lewis appears during Madonna's halftime performance at the NFL Super Bowl XLVI football game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, Feb. 5, 2012, in Indianapolis. (Charlie Riedel\/Associated Press file)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. slackliner Andy Lewis, of California, balances on a slackline, July 23, 2014 in Bangkok, Thailand. (Sakchai Lalit\/Associated Press file) A weekend BASE jumping accident in a Utah canyon killed two people, one of them a daredevil athlete best known for performing onstage with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities said. The sheriff’s office […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":133394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6401],"tags":[346,121],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-133393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-news","tag-sports","tag-utah"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133393"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=133393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}