CHICAGO, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- Daredevil Nik Wallenda will attempt a high-wire walk across the Chicago RIver as the sun sets in the Windy City tonight.
And once he completes that feat, Wallenda will do a much shorter walk between two towers while wearing a blindfold.
In both cases, he'll work without a net or safety harness, a long-standing tradition in his daredevil family The Flying Wallendas.
The event is being livestreamed by the Discovery Channel. The first walk is expected to begin at 6 p.m. Central Time.
If the Chicago wind becomes a problem and Wallenda loses his balance, he plans to lower himself down, grab onto the steel wire and hang on until his team can rescue him.
Wallenda has carried the tradition of his daredevil family into the 21st Century. His two most spectacular high-wire walks have been across a gorge in Arizona near the Grand Canyon and across Niagra Falls.
The family business has sometimes been a painful one for the Wallendas. Members have died or fallen and been paralyzed. Nik Wallenda lost his greatest inspiration to a fall from the wire. His great grandfather Karl died during a walk in Puerto Rico in 1978.
The walk across the Chicago River is considered by some to be death-defying. A former Chicago emergency room doctor now in private practice there told DNAinfo Wallenda would be unlikely to survive if he toppled the 600-feet to the river below.
