Marin County native and celebrated BASE jumper dies in tandem leap with client

Renowned extreme athlete Andy Lewis and a BASE jumping client died in a tandem accident in a remote area of Utah on Sunday, officials said. 

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Rescuers from the Grand County Sheriff’s Office and two helicopters responded to the Mineral Bottom area, however both of the men succumbed to their injuries at the scene, the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post. (Mineral Bottom is on Bureau of Land Management territory between Arches and Canyonlands national parks). 

“Andy was tandem BASE jumping with a customer,” Grand County SAR Vice Commander Scott Solle wrote in an email to SFGATE. “I believe this to be the first fatal tandem BASE accident ever.” 

The sheriff’s office has not released the identity of the man who died and the office did not respond to SFGATE’s additional questions about what led up to the two men’s deaths. But Grand County Sheriff Jamison Wiggins reportedly told the Moab Times-Independent that the man was Danny Joe Kregle, 68, of Arizona. 

BASE jumping is a daredevil sport that involves jumping from a fixed area, such as a building or cliff, and deploying a parachute.

Lewis’ ex-fiancee and longtime romantic partner, Hayley Ashburn told SFGATE that Lewis was executing a tandem base jump with a client off of a 350-foot cliff at Mineral Bottom Canyon. 

During the jump, their parachute malfunctioned and didn’t fully inflate, according to Ashburn. The two crashed into the talus, she said, which is a hillside of broken rock, and the client died on impact. 

Lewis had severe injuries including a head injury, Ashburn said, and he “fought for his life.”

There was no service at the crash site, but a close friend of Lewis’ drove up the cliff and made a “heroic” attempt to save Lewis, radioing for help, according to Ashburn.

Medical personnel and helicopters arrived within an hour, she said, but Lewis died at the scene.

Known professionally as “Sketchy Andy,” Lewis was a trailblazer in the extreme sports community, Ashburn said, and a pioneer in the slackline world. According to Outside Magazine, he landed the first-ever backflip on a slackline, and set and held many other records, including the Guinness World Record for the most side-to-side swings on a slackline in one minute. 

“He showed us all what was humanly possible, and got away with it for 40 years, almost 40 years of pushing the envelope. Andy Lewis, he was my everything, you know, he was my teacher, my mentor,” Ashburn said. 

Lewis was well-versed in the risks of tandem BASE jumping. He co-owned Moab Swingers with his friend Jimmy Peterson, and on the company’s website, Lewis is described as the “world’s most experienced tandem BASE jumper, with over 4,000 jumps.” The 39-year-old, who famously performed tricks for Madonna’s Super Bowl Halftime Show in 2012, also has ties to the Bay Area. According to the Marin Independent Journal, Lewis grew up in Greenbrae, a small unincorporated area of Marin County before he moved to Moab, Utah.

In a Facebook post, Moab Swingers co-owner Peterson paid tribute to Lewis and said he was with him in his last moments. 

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“Oh Andy there’s so much I could say, 14 years of crazy incredible memories,” Peterson wrote. “Getting to be one of the first people to you on the talus was heartbreaking to see and beautiful to help do everything we could to save you.”
 
Peterson did not respond to SFGATE’s request for comment. 

Lewis was also the co-owner of Aerial Arts Moab, a rope swinging company. In an Instagram post, the company called him one of their best friends.

“The number of times he told all of us he loved us and told us in very specific ways how he was grateful for each of us is something I will treasure all my days,” the post read. 

Lewis’ death has sparked dozens of comments on both companies’ social media posts and individual posts from other members of the outdoor sports community.

Matt LaJeunesse, the founder of Tandem BASE Moab, the only other BASE jumping company in the area, posted a video on Instagram, saying the community is still processing the accident and grieving. He described the sport as “one of the most dangerous activities on the planet.”

“I have lost a lot of people over the course of time,” he said. “…It’s an emotional rollercoaster, it’s a physical rollercoaster. No matter how much we enjoy it, one word I can never use to describe it would be safe. There’s a very clear risk when jumping off of a cliff.”

Ashburn echoed a similar sentiment, acknowledging the dangerous nature of BASE jumping. 

“No one has ever said base jumping is safe,” she said. “…Everyone has the right to take whatever risk they want to take, and Andy would have fought for that until his last breath. And he did.”

Lewis’ family is in the process of setting up a GoFundMe fundraiser, Ashburn told SFGATE.