Humboldt daredevil Sketchy Andy dies in Utah BASE jumping accident

Humboldt County is mourning Andy Lewis, the Humboldt State graduate known as Sketchy Andy, whose slackline stunts and desert exploits made him one of the North Coast’s most improbable national figures. Long after he left the county, Lewis still carried that Humboldt edge, moving from local lore to the Super Bowl stage and, later, into the Utah monolith saga that only deepened his notoriety.

Lewis died in a tandem BASE-jumping accident in the Mineral Bottom area of Grand County, Utah. He was 39. The other person killed was his client, Danny Joe Kregle, 68, of Arizona. Grand County sheriff’s officials said the incident remains under investigation.

Lewis first reached a much wider audience on Feb. 5, 2012, when he performed slackline tricks during Madonna’s Super Bowl XLVI halftime show. For many readers, that image became the shorthand for who he was: a Humboldt-born daredevil with the balance of an athlete and the nerve of a stunt performer, someone whose name fit naturally into the county’s long memory of odd, outdoorsy, larger-than-life characters.

That reputation only grew during the 2020 monolith episode near Moab, when Lewis publicly said on Dec. 1, 2020, that he and three associates removed the famous desert structure. The object was later turned over to the Bureau of Land Management, and the episode made him instantly recognizable far beyond southern Utah. In Humboldt, where people tend to remember both the spectacle and the backstory, the confession reinforced the same image Lewis had carried for years: a local outdoorsman who seemed to live somewhere between performance art and high-risk adventure.

Tributes from the global extreme sports and outdoor communities have poured in since his death, underscoring how far Lewis had traveled from Humboldt State and the North Coast. But for Humboldt County, the loss lands differently. Sketchy Andy was not just a stunt name from national TV or a headline from the desert. He was a former local who helped define the county’s eccentric, fearless, trailblazing identity, and that legacy now joins Humboldt’s own archive of unforgettable homegrown figures.