A Redwood High alumnus whose extreme athlete performances included a stunt-filled routine during Madonna’s halftime show in the 2012 Super Bowl died over the weekend in a BASE-jumping attempt in southeastern Utah.
Andrew Lewis and Danny Joe Kregle were found in the secluded desert area of Mineral Bottom inside a canyon in Grand County, the sheriff’s office said.
“I want to live each month where I can run into somebody and tell them what I’ve done,” said Lewis in an interview with the Independent Journal in 2010.
Lewis, 39, grew up in Greenbrae, graduated from Redwood in 2004 and attended College of Marin for two years. In 2008, he earned a degree in recreation administration from Humboldt State University, and worked at a day camp in San Rafael and a skydiving company in Lodi before taking up slacklining full time.
Slackliner Andy Lewis of the US balances as he walks on a highline from the rooftop of a building in Bangkok on July 23, 2014. AFP PHOTO / PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL
The two men died tandem BASE jumping, which involves two people harnessed together while jumping off a tall, fixed structure and later parachuting to the ground. Both men died from their injuries at the scene, according to the sheriff’s office.
Lewis owned a tandem BASE jumping company in Utah, BASE Jump Moab. While no official death tally for BASE jumping has been reported, the sport is well known for being dangerous.
Around 30 people are estimated to have been killed doing the sport last year alone, according to BASEaddict.com. One study, conducted by Norwegian researchers in 2007, found BASE jumping to be up to eight times more likely to result in injury or death compared to skydiving.
Lewis rose to fame in 2012 while performing a slacklining routine with Madonna during the Super Bowl, but was well known in the slacklining community for his achievements in the niche sport.
Slacklining involves balancing on a thin, flat line anchored to two points, but can also entail performing acrobatic tricks, which is called tricklining, on the bouncy webbing.
In more extreme versions, known as highlining, the sport involves athletes, including Lewis, stepping out on the line hundreds or even thousands of feet above the ground sometimes without a safety harness. In 2008, Lewis was given the title of the first-ever slackline world champion.
“Andy is the best slackliner in the world if you put it all together,” Robert Kaeding, a German equipment manufacturer, told the Independent Journal in 2012.
Lewis went on to win back-to-back slacklining championships and earned a Guinness World Record for the sport in 2011. He was well known for performing heart-racing highlining stunts, including traversing between two Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Casino towers nearly 500 feet off the ground in 2013.
Lewis was also well known in the BASE jumping community, starting BASE Jump Moab in 2018. Along with tandem BASE jumps, the company, described on their website as “an extreme adventure outfitter and guide company,” offers guided rock climbing, rope swinging, rappelling and canyoneering. BASE stands for building, antenna, span and earth.
“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” John McEvoy, a BASE jumping instructor who knew Lewis, told the New York Times. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”
The Grand County Sheriff’s Office is still investigating the cause of the deaths for both Lewis and Kregle.
_The New York Times and the Associated Press contributed to this report._