Tragedy struck over the weekend in a Utah canyon when a BASE jumping accident claimed the lives of two individuals, including a renowned daredevil who once performed with Madonna during the 2012 Super Bowl halftime show, officials reported.
According to the Grand County Sheriff’s Office in Utah, emergency crews were called to Mineral Bottom, a secluded desert location near the Utah-Colorado border, on Sunday following reports of injuries sustained during a BASE jumping attempt.
Authorities have identified one of the deceased as Andy Lewis, an acclaimed extreme sports athlete celebrated for his prowess in BASE jumping. This high-risk activity involves leaping from a fixed structure, such as a building, bridge, or cliff, and parachuting to the ground.
The ill-fated jump was a tandem one, meaning the two individuals were harnessed together, as detailed in a social media update from Aerial Arts Moab. The acrobatics company lamented the loss, referring to Lewis as both “co-owner and best friend.”
Lewis also founded BASE Jump Moab, a company that provided tandem jumps for novices, pairing them with experienced guides equipped with parachutes. Promotional content from the business features duos stepping off sheer cliff faces, experiencing freefall before their parachutes deploy.
Jared Alden / Getty Images 
Lewis’ risk-taking knew few bounds Â
In BASE jumping circles, Lewis had a huge following and a reputation for pushing the envelope – 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.
“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy said. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”
Grand County Sheriff Jamison Wiggins confirmed the other person who was killed was Danny Joe Kregle, a 68-year-old father and grandfather who was described by a family member as an accomplished businessman.
“Danny had a wonderful sense of humor and was always looking for ways to make people laugh,” relative Sydney Laverty told The Times-Independent. “One of his greatest joys was performing magic tricks alongside his granddaughter.”
Lewis was also a prominent figure in the niche sports of slacklining and tricklining, which combine elements of high-wire walking with aerial acrobatics – sometimes at perilous heights.
He went from obscure athlete to overnight celebrity when he appeared onstage in Madonna’s 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.
AP Photo / Charlie Riedel, File 
“My phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,” Lewis said soon afterward in an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late night show.
BASE jumping much riskier than skydiving, study shows
Though there’s no official tally of BASE jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website BASEaddict.com shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981 – including 30 people killed last year. Prominent deaths include BASE jumper Dean Potter and his climbing partner, Graham Hunt, who were killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight in California’s Yosemite National Park.
A study focused on BASE jumping in Norway, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE jumping carried risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.
Lewis openly acknowledged the sport’s inherent danger.
“It’s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it’s like a normal thing,” Lewis told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.
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.
“Within BASE, it’s a very controversial topic,” McEvoy said. “There’s a lot of people who say it’s the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing: `No, we’re giving people the experience of their lives.’”
No one immediately returned phone, text and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.
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.
In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet above the Nevada desert.
Lewis’ other sport made him an overnight celebrity, thanks to Madonna.