Andrew “Andy” Lewis, an internationally known Moab slackliner and BASE jumper, was one of two people killed Sunday in a BASE jumping incident in the remote Mineral Bottom area of Grand County, the Grand County Sheriff’s Office said.
The remote Mineral Bottom area of Grand County, where the incident occurred.
The sheriff’s office dispatch was notified of the incident on June 14, according to a press release from Sheriff Jamison Wiggins’s office. Deputies, Grand County Search and Rescue, Grand County EMS and two Intermountain helicopters responded to the scene.
Lewis was identified by the sheriff’s office in the release. Wiggins confirmed to the Moab Sun News that Lewis was the owner and operator of BASE Jump Moab, a local guiding company. A second man, described as approximately 50 years old, also died at the scene and had not been identified.
In an email with the Moab Sun News, the sheriff’s office confirmed the two men died during a tandem BASE jump, in which a passenger is harnessed to an experienced jumper and the pair descends together on one parachute. The office has not said whether the jump was a commercial outing.
Lewis was a well-known public figure in Moab, as recognizable for his outsized personality as for his athletic career.
Lewis, 39, was originally from Santa Rosa, California, and became one of the best-known figures in slacklining, helping popularize “tricklining” — performing tricks on a bouncing line — in the mid-2000s. In 2011 he set a Guinness World Record for the most side surfs on a slackline in one minute, and in 2012 he performed a slackline routine during Madonna’s Super Bowl XLVI halftime show. He was known widely by the nickname “Sketchy Andy.”
Lewis later made Moab his home base, where he owned the guiding company BASE Jump Moab. Since 2018 he had run commercial tandem BASE-jumping operations in the area — one of a small number of outfits offering the experience under a Bureau of Land Management authorization in Grand County. Moab’s red-rock cliffs, including the area around Mineral Bottom, have long drawn BASE jumpers from around the world.
“The Grand County Sheriff’s Office extends its deepest sympathies to the families, friends, and all those affected by this tragic incident,” the release said.
This is a developing story. Moab Sun News will update it as more information becomes available.
