(Above) Karl Wallenda walks across Tallulah Gorge in Georgia on July 18, 1970. (Click on image to view larger version.)

16-Mar-15 – Walking a high wire between Chicago skyscrapers apparently was not enough of a challenge for Florida daredevil Nik Wallenda, but his plans for a longer, more dangerous walk – following in his great-grandfather’s footsteps – have been postponed.

The problem is with video technology that would project film footage of Karl Wallenda walking 1,250 feet across Tallulah Gorge, a valley in Georgia, on July 18, 1970. The 65-year-old, arguably the world’s greatest high wire performer at the time, stood on his head twice during the walk.

Nik Wallenda wanted to perform the walk this summer, walking in sync with the projected image of his great-grandfather.

“I get chills thinking about it,” he said in Chicago on October 31, 2014, two days before successfully walking from Marina City across the Chicago River to Leo Burnett Building. He then walked – blindfolded – from Marina City’s west tower to its east tower.

He says the technology “isn’t there yet.”

“I want this walk to be unique, it’s got to be special,” he told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

“I’ve been taking an age-old art form and making it modern by using a lot of different camera angles and bringing audiences with me on the wire to give them a view they’ve never seen before. And I want this to be right. So it’s not a question of if – it’s a question of when.”

If not over Georgia, Wallenda will still perform a high-wire walk that Discovery will broadcast worldwide as it did from Chicago, although a location has not yet been determined.

Wallenda will be back in the Midwest in August, performing at the Wisconsin State Fair. He will walk on a wire 1,560 feet long, the longest of his career so far.