Wallenda completes crossing near Grand Canyon

LITTLE COLORADO RIVER GORGE, Ariz. -- Florida aerialist Nik Wallenda completed a tightrope walk that took him a quarter-mile over the Little Colorado River Gorge in northeastern Arizona on Sunday.

Wallenda, 34, performed the stunt on a 2-inch-thick steel cable, 1,500 feet above the river on the Navajo Nation near the Grand Canyon. He wasn't wearing a harness.

Wallenda took just more than 22 minutes, pausing and kneeling twice to get "the rhythm out of the rope" and murmuring prayers to Jesus almost constantly along the way.

He stepped slow and steady most of the way, but jubilantly jogged and hopped the last few steps toward terra firma. The event was broadcast live on the Discovery Channel, with a delay, just in case.

He is a seventh-generation high-wire artist from the famed, and tragic, "Flying Wallendas" circus family. Sunday's stunt comes a year after he traversed Niagara Falls earning a seventh Guinness world record. -- AP