Whew! Nik Wallenda Makes It Through Risky Chicago High

Daredevil acrobat Nik Wallenda gingerly crossed two wires, at one point blindfolded and without a safety harness or a net, strung between two Chicago skyscrapers on a Sunday evening in a derring-do high-wire act above the Windy City. Holding a pole, Wallenda cautiously moved across 94 feet - two times - and on a wire that was 3/4-inch thick. With cheers and whistles coming from a crowd gathered below, the stunt was captured live on the Discovery Channel and streamed at SkyScraperLive.

It was the latest feat for Wallenda, who became the first person to walk across the Grand Canyon on a wire in June 2013. By completing part two of the jaunt, Discovery said Wallenda had performed the world's highest walk wearing a blindfold.

TODAY's Willie Geist and Natalie Morales and The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore hosted the skyscraper jaunt.

Wallenda took on a 15-degree incline for the first part of the walk and then wore a blindfold during the second part of it. He trained at his home near Sarasota, Florida, on exact replicas of the two wires he will cross in Chicago.

Weather conditions were sunny, 50 degrees, with winds at 2 mph.

The most difficult aspect would be the blindfold, Wallenda told TODAY on Friday.

'Taking away that most important sense of a wire walker - vision and focus - is very, very challenging,' he said.

The walk wasn't be broadcast live - there was a 10-second delay -- and if anything went wrong, Discovery had backup plans to ensure 'nothing that is insensitive or inappropriate' would air, The New York Times reported.

Wallenda hails from a traveling circus family, the Flying Wallendas. He told the Times that the Chicago walk was dedicated to them, particularly his great-grandfather Karl Wallenda, who fell to his death during a promotion walk in Puerto Rico in March 1978.

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First published November 2 2014, 4:00 PM

Miranda Leitsinger

Miranda Leitsinger is a reporter at NBC News. She started this role in February 2011. Leitsinger is responsible for long-term enterprise and breaking news coverage. Her beats include recovery from natural disasters and mass shootings, the LGBT community, income inequality, immigration and the Boy Scouts. Leitsinger previously worked at CNN.com in Hong Kong as a digital producer, where she collaborated with the network's television staff in Asia to produce enterprise stories for the website. Before that she worked as a reporter at for seven years in various cities, including New York, Miami, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Bangkok, Thailand, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. She covered the aftermath of 9/11 in Florida, the 2004 tsunami in Asia, the initial military tribunal at Guantanamo and Cambodia's bid to recover from genocide and the ensuing decades of civil war.Leitsinger, a San Francisco native, lives in New York.

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