World's Most Interesting Places: Vol. 2 | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

it turns out Saddam Hussein did possess a weapon of mass destruction and he used it in a Slaughter that few people have heard of until now after the Gulf War in 1991 Saddam spent Untold Millions on a weapon designed to exterminate an ancient civil ization called the Madan also known as the marsh Arabs they lived in Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where many biblical Scholars place the Garden of Eden but if this was the place where man fell from Grace Saddam showed just how far man can fall in a spectacular feat of engineering he used water in a strike against his own people that not even an Adam Bomb could match recently we journeyed there with an American engineer who's resurrecting this magical land that was turned to dust by saddam's secret weapon we are now officially inside the marsh and you can see the reads getting denser and denser taller and taller Azam alwash grew up in the water world that the Greeks named Mesopotamia the land between two rivers I got to tell you this is not like any part of aaq I've ever seen before I mean when you say it's a desert right it's it's uh burning oil hey it's it's it's magical is what it is this is Magic it's been more than 30 years since he pushed through the reads with his father who ran the irrigation office here so I have very warm memories of this place in 1978 alwash left to study in America and became a partner in an engineering firm I achieved the the American dream Scott you'd been living in the United States for 25 years you're an American C you married an American woman your children are as American as they can be and I'm as American as can be why did you imagine going back to Iraq after the life you had built I realized at some point in time that that money and success and the American dream is not everything working on passion on something that drives you is everything his passion is a world where Mother Nature meets father time it's the cradle of civilization outlined by by the Tigris and Euphrates the likely birthplace of Agriculture the written word and the wheel but once the Ancients set civilization on its course the Madan stayed [Applause] behind their Villages are primitive they weave a life out of the reads of the marsh they bind them into homes feed them to their water buffalo and burn them to bake their bread there's not much in the way of electricity education or Healthcare but Elders like sah told us they did just fine until 1991 when they suffered their own kind of Holocaust that was when the US and its allies invaded Southern Iraq to throw Saddam out of Kuwait but there's another way for the Bloodshed to stop the Elder President Bush urged Iraqis to overthrow their dict Ator to take matters into their own hands the Madan and other Shiites in the South supported an uprising to toppel saddam's regime the marshes known for ages as a Smuggler's Paradise turned out to be a perfect place for the rebels to hide with their endless Maze of waterways like these on the Iranian border but in 1991 when the Allies withdrew Saddam turned Eden into hell the United Nations environmental program called it the biggest engineered environmental disaster of the last century Saddam tried to wipe out the marsh Arabs by destroying their world he built six canals to divert the Waters of the Tigris and Euphrates out into the desert and the Persian Gulf in a 5-year project he drained 90% of the marshes an area of more than 3,000 square miles now as an engineer I'm telling you drying of the marshes is definitely not an easy task it's a Monumental engineering project he put every piece of equipment available in Iraq under his control at the services of the projects needed to dry the marshes Saddam was using water as a weapon you know the world was looking for weapons of mass destruction it was the evidence was right under its nose this is a madon village shot by National Geographic in the 1970s when the marshes were the middle east's largest Wetland and this is is what most of the region looked like after the man-made drought H LZ to get a sense of the scale of the engineering project we went to have a look with the Illinois National Guard's 106th Aviation Wing 200 ft that's one of saddam's canals designed to capture the water carry it past the marshes and dump it in the Persian Gulf one embankment runs through the middle of the picture but this man made Canal is so wide you can hardly see the other side more than a mile away in fact it's wider than the Euphrates itself it's an unbelievable engineering achievement this is my first time seeing it from the air this close up and it is it is spectacular no one will ever know how many lives were lost and how many families were left in Misery by the genocide that followed they didn't even wait for nature to to die in natural death as soon as the embankments were finished they put light to the reads of the marshes Set Fire to the Set Fire to the reads the cradle of civilization what Eden was was desiccated dead we met some of the survivors like shik Hassan returning to the rubble left by saddam's Army what happened to the Village after everyone was ordered out I mean what happened to this house the government gave us 3 days to get out before the tanks came and crushed our houses they destroyed about 180 houses in the area Hassan told us that many of his tribesmen were found in Mass Graves across the region thousands were killed about 100,000 were forced from their homes but then 12 years later when Saddam fell aam alwash helped launch a Counterattack on the Fortress of drought we're we're we're coming to it's right there oh this is where you knocked the hole in the in the D that's right so you brought heavy Earth moving equipment in and and knocked a hole in what sadams Engineers had built indeed I I got the last laugh it was the beginning of his group called nature Iraq that has developed a plan to restore the marshes the thing is it was it was a small hole as the water starts flowing it started digging its own passageway you just had to break it just just let the water start going so the the Euphrates has just pushed its way through there once you broke it yes once once you let the water go in it just makes its own way all's travels can be dangerous this is still a war zone we traveled with a security team lent by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and with a squad of Iraqi police oh the IP is following us they found us yeah allash wasn't sure that just reflooding the bar and Earth would resurrect what was lost but when we traveled deeper into the marshes we saw what sprung up up since the waters returned in 2003 there oh look at that look at that we have entered another time this is the Water World in the middle of deser wow all these houses built with nothing but reads without reads you can't have this way of life reeds are the skeleton of these people's lives the house of reeds is called a mif aash wanted one as a meeting hall for his project and we were there to watch the construction it's made of nothing but reads Bound by reads the Arches are planted in the ground and pulled into shape then woven mats cover the top aasa's mif is 15 ft tall and 70 ft long it's where we did our interview and where one of the vill Elders came to entertain us have a look at the medi and compare it to this 5,000-year-old carving turns out they do build them like they used to near the marshes the samarians erected this Temple at the city of UR the samarians thought the marshes were so important they wrote a story about them the Story Goes that the gods grew angry at man so they sent a deluge to cover the Earth one of the Gods thought that was a terrible idea so he warned one man to build a boat and save all the animals the people of this region came up with that story hundreds of years before the Old Testament gave us Noah the city of or is said to be the birthplace of Abraham the father of Judaism Christianity and Islam now his descendants are returning to a life that he might have recognized this cluster behind us is a cluster of about three islands built by Generations over Generations dirt read dirt read every time it settles they add a new layer and that's how they make their Islands that's the Samaran creation story that God laid down readed mats and created man and created the world indeed indeed exactly they took it from their lives and you know of course the God live the way they do you know and this is Eden What's Happening Now is sort of a second creation story thousands of marsh Arabs have returned to this land since the reflooding began and the Madan are rebuilding their islands with a few changes that Abraham would not have imagined these people are restoring the marshes not because they're treeh Huggers like I am they're restoring the marshes because they are trying to live it's not because they love the birds flying or uh or the the reads look nice it's about it's about livelihood we saw that when we came up on a reed Market families were bringing their Harvest to a place where the new Waters spelled the end of saddam's Road what is your hope for this place my hope is I see the marshes as a destination for ecotourism I see the marshes is as a destination for archaeological tourism but you that's a very nice picture but this is a country at War yeah okay so of course the war is not going to last forever if you're going to dream dream big it's free alwash is lobbying Parliament to make his boyhood home Iraq's first national park but no matter how big the dream the marshes will never be what they once were Upstream as far as turkey and Syria there are more than 30 dams diverting water there's a serious drought right now and oil has been discovered here exploration will surely follow still about 30% of the marshes have been reflooded the land of civilization's past has a future again one of the most significant efforts to study changes in the climate has been taking place near the top of the world it's a place called Peterman Glacier in Greenland one of the largest glaciers in the arctic circle and a glacier that has experienced dramatic melting it is a harsh and dangerous environment and it has drawn some of the world's leading climate scientists who are only able to work there a little over a month a year we wanted to see how that work is proceeding how they're able to move equipment and people in such a hostile place and what they've discovered so far so we went to the top of the world to find out our journey took us 700 mil above the Arctic Circle to the US's Tuli Air Force Base in Northern Greenland built at the start of the Cold War to watch for Soviet missiles it is an alien landscape home to curious Arctic hairs and packed of prehistoric looking muscs from there hi hi welome to Greenland I'm Malik we flew even further the destination Peterman Glacier it's on the northwest coast of Greenland just a few hundred mil south of the North Pole to get there in a helicopter took us 4 hours over a rarely seen landscape that is both severe and Serene the last Town we'd see was kanak with 700 residents and more Huskies Than People Locked In by Ice 9 months of the year villagers have always hunted seal and narwhal to survive Greenland is three times the size of Texas and 80% of it is covered in ice but it now loses more ice than a g rains and snowfall every year we saw evidence of the imbalance everywhere blue gashes across the ice rivers of rushing meltwater and the occasional thunderous crack of icebergs dropping into the sea we still had 300 mil to go and stopped twice to refuel along the way these barrels were left behind for us by the scientists who made the trip to Peterman glacier 3 weeks earlier this is the ultimate self-service gas station the middle of the way and this will keep us going for how much longer yeah we can Fly 2 and 1/2 hours our Pilots native greenlanders kept a rifle nearby at each stop to protect us from polar bears have you seen polar bears out here yeah a lot so now it's ready now we're safe finally we arrived at Peterman Glacier oh there's the camp and spotted the ice Camp below great to see you so who did you upset to get put out here oh no the gods the gods Keith Nicholls is an expert in drilling in remote places and in terms of remote this would be really hard to beat it feels like you're on another planet if you could take a war around here you could be expecting Scotty to beam you up I it is extraordinary Nicholls and a team of scientists were drawn to this remote sliver of Greenland in part by these satellite images in 2010 a chunk of ice four times the size of Manhattan broke off then 2 years later another large chunk came [Music] down the glacier has receded by 20 m in 5 years Nicholls and his team are trying to drill beneath it this is a lot of work in difficult conditions what do you hope to learn what we're trying to learn is how the oceans are interacting with the ice how they're melting it we're trying to predict how in the future that melting might change to drill through the ice they heated melt water from the glacier to make a hot water drill to pierce through the 300t thick ice there has to be serious challenge to running equipment like this in this kind of weather the biggest challenge is we've got water and it's very cold so if we have water freezing in hoses that can be devastating it's for the projects this is the moment the coring machine struck the bottom of the sea floor a half mile beneath the ice they made history it was the first time anyone has ever collected sediment from beneath the ice shelf in Greenland the ocean beneath eyce shelves is probably the least accessible part of the world ocean and uh just just getting access to that is a Triumph frankly as far as we're concerned the ice shelf extends out from the glacier and floats on the ocean they believe it acts like a dam holding back the ice from sliding into the sea if it goes away sea levels go up is there a sense of urgency in the work that you're doing so sea level rise is the big is the big question that we're trying to get at and pet and glacia this experiment here gives us an opportunity to get at those processes to start try and understand the basic physics as to to how how that can happen our visit to the ice Camp was cut short our Pilots warned us something called ice fog was moving in and could strand us here for days we High tailed it back to the helicopter heading to another Outpost of the Expedition what the scientists call Boulder camp set up on the edge of Peterman Glacier Sean marot and a team of geologists have been here for weeks Gathering samples from rocks so this was probably deposited when the ice was maybe a few hundred to a few thousand ft thicker and when it was deposited you're probably talking about maybe 5 600t of ice above us above where we are above where we are now Peterman would have been much larger and it would have been dropping these rocks all over the surface to the person at home who's looking at you guys just chipping away at rocks and going why should I care about this we know that if you warm the planet up the glaciers respond they melt the question is at what rate how fast is that going to happen and where is it going to happen and where are the most vulnerable spots of this ice sheet to understand all of that you have to understand how the ice sheet what controls an ice sheet we need to understand this Glacier so that we can provide a better prediction for the larger ice sheet that matters to us because of sea level if these glaciers can respond dynamically then we should all be concerned because that can create Dynamic changes in sea level and flood infrastructure and we need to know that for planning for the future we camped out next to the scientists with 24 hours of light we slept in these tents under the Midnight Sun in the morning we were shuttled out to meet the Odin a Swedish Icebreaker making its way around Peterman Glacier the Odin supports the scientists on land and acts as a floating laboratory named after a Norse god who relentlessly sought wisdom it's home to more than 50 climate scientists from around the world with similar convictions their work is funded mostly by the Swedish government and the US's National Science Foundation Larry Mayer is one of the geologists on the Odin he's using Sonar to map the ocean floor creating the first detailed maps that show how Peterman Glacier slid into the sea you can see it like skid marks of a car at an accident scene yeah the ice one here and the ice went there and we can see oh and it stopped here how much of the world's oceans have been mapped with this kind of detail oh probably uh on the order of 6 or 7% very very little yeah you can only make the trip to Peterman Glacier a few weeks each summer when the ice melts enough to allow passage you can see those blocks of ice Drifting by Expedition leader Alan mix is running the ship's cing operation trying to grab sediment from the sea floor there actually a cing site right now now is under that block of ice and we just can't get there so we're we're trying to drift with the ice and just sort of sneak up on it gently it's hard to sneak up on anything in an ice breaker yoden doesn't so much a sail as it does smash the ice like a 13,000 ton Hammer once in position they throw something called a piston core like a dart at the bottom of the ocean oh that doesn't sound good after multiple attempts go to the next one but we'll hit it with a gravity core a core sample like this is collected inside the ship's lab the multi-year process of investigating those cores begins what's your best guess how old is this so the base of this core probably is no more than 10,000 years an Jennings is with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine research she says each core holds clues about Peterman glacier's past well we didn't really expect to find things living under the ice shelf that we have what have you found this one we found is called cidoes woer stori it has a big name for a little bug easy for you to say it looks like a little seashell and it is a seashell but it's a single celled animal that single celled animal like all living creatures is made out of carbon allowing scientist to determine when it lived which tells you what the age of the sediments so we can take then the depth scale here and convert it to age and then we can say when did the Ice Retreat how quickly did it retreat was there a lot of melt water coming out you can get all that from what looks like mud yes after a week in Greenland we headed home but the scientists kept working taking advantage of the final days of the short arctic summer the 66 core samples they collected during their month at Sea will be studied by scientists around the world for decades this is the largest core repository in the world Peter dominical is a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University he says the cores collected in Greenland are like a black box of the Earth's inner workings this one he collected just south of Greenland so this is today's climate and we've had about 10,000 years of relative warm climate and then we go 10,000 years in the past boom there's the last ice age this is when Long Island was formed when Cape Cod was formed go on and you can just find this color and this is filled with these rocks what we called ice rafted detrius until this period when whoa there's another warm phase and then another cold phase and then another warm phase a short cold phase a longer warm phase and then boom Another Ice Age and so you've had cold warm cold warm cold warm today how do we know that the warming we're seeing now how do we not know it's part of this warm cold warm cold that's a great question these transitions are gradual and kind of almost like a tide wave or something and this transition when you get to today goes boom suddenly very warm dominical says the course pulled from Peterman Glacier will fill in a crucial piece of the climate change puzzle how impressive was it that they got to Peterman Glacier it's impressive what's more impressive is that we haven't been there every year and that we're not going not doing this every year we should be doing this we should be monitoring this whole system with much greater uh Focus than we are now how quickly have we seen the changes in Greenland the changes that are happening right now as a result of human activities are remarkable and they're happening incredibly fast and they're it's not only happening fast but it's accelerating um and it's important to really get our mind around what we're saying there we're not just saying that climate in the Arctic is changing it's changing at an accelerating rate so it basically means it's starting to melt but it's melting at a faster and faster clip so anyone who knows what it's like to fall off a cliff that's what it's doing we're about to visit a place few people have seen firsthand the Vatican Library a vast collection of historic Treasures Beyond Compare founded over five centuries ago when Europe was coming out of the Dark Ages a period of so-called humanism when the Catholic church was open to new ideas in philosophy science and the human spirit it's the Pope's library but it contains much more than just church documents there are manuscripts going back nearly 2,000 years on music and math Warfare and exploration even cookbooks and love letters the library is closed to the public a place for Scholars only but the Vatican agreed to let us in to see some of the Priceless artifacts of our Collective [Music] past welcome to the 15th century in Rome turn a corner and you bump into Antiquity a delicious mixed salad of present and past we arrived at the Vatican to find a medieval costume parade in progress what better way to begin a trek through history there's about 2 million printed books 2 million printed books and inside the Library the past surrounded us again as we were shown the Magnificent building and its riches this is the arbino Bible for instance this spectacular Bible commissioned in 1476 by the Duke of orbino wanted to have a very fancy Bible here you go and this is what he got Library curator Timothy Jans tells us the Bible took years to make by hand letter by letter picture by picture decorated with real gold it's just one of the libraries 80,000 handwritten manuscripts from the ages before the printing press add to that those 2 million or so printed books Christian and Pagan sacred and profane in virtually every language known to man there are thousands of prints and drawings windows on the past and a huge collection of ancient coins this was the money of Palestine 2,000 years ago including the kind of silver coins Judas was said to have been paid to betray Christ here is a map of the world drawn 50 years before Columbus at its Edge the towers of paradise and an immediate bestseller Columbus's description of his voyage to the New World published in 1493 in a certain way the library is is kind of the attic of Western Civilization that's so true and it's like many attics you know you put things up all the time you keep on pushing over boxes to make space for more things that was Father Michael Collins is an Irish priest who's written extensively about the Vatican where the library shelves if you put them end to end would stretch for 31 miles is there anyone any single person who really knows what the library holds nobody knows exactly what's there because it will be imposs possible for the human brain to understand to remember the titles who wrote it when they were written it is quite a treasure of the humanity that you have here monor cheser pasini presides over the library its Great Hall essentially unchanged over the centuries is a picture gallery of antiquity Saints philosophers and depictions of the great libraries of the pre-christian world Babylon Athens Alexandria a shrine to learning and to books there's one person who can actually take a book out of the library correct oh yes the pope can can have every book in the [Applause] library if St Peter's Basilica represents the Splendor of the church RIT large the library nearby is a Testament to the monks and scribes who made magnificent Miniatures in times past here some devotional music commissioned by Pope Leo VI 10th and the text of the Christmas Mass used at the altar by Alexander V 6 both manuscripts 5 centuries old written on parchment treated animal skin you will often see the the skin of sheep being used sometimes goats Christopher chelenza director of the American Academy in Rome is a scholar who's often used the library he says that writing on parchment was not only tedious but expensive if a monastery wanted to produce a Bible that perhaps had 400 Pages it might cost you 400 sheep it's an investment beyond the uh the academic work did you ever just come here to hang out and flip through stuff and see what you might discover I think all of us have come here at one time or another with the hope of discovering something having a general direction in which we're going but not quite knowing where it will wind up you might find as curator adelbert Roth showed us drawings of a German jousting tournament in 1481 or an old cookbook telling us that Roman Foodies in the 4th Century dined on chicken ve Seafood pancakes in milk and whipped pearc cake how to hack away at your enemy's wall or from an 11th century Treatise on The Art of War a Byzantine Soldier brandishing a flamethrower something the Greeks invented 1500 years earlier or Henry VII's Love Letters to Anne Bolin the letters are certainly among among the most bizarre and unusual letter you'd expect to find in the Pope's archives there are 17 of them handwritten by the king of England to the woman he would make the second of his Six Wives and later have beheaded there's the little heart Henry signs his name with a heart like a smitten school boy he tells of his fervent of love his great loneliness without her wishing myself he says in my sweetheart's arms whose pretty duckies I trust shortly to kiss duckies being a term in Henry's day for well well use your imagination what is that doing in the Vatican Library we don't know how they ended up here in the Vatican it may be that some spy maybe one of my Priestly predecessors may have stolen these letters and brought them to Rome to present in the case if a trial was made uh for Henry's request for divorce but the church refused to let Henry divorce Katherine of Aragon so he could marry an he married her anyway broke with Rome and took control of the Church of England the country was largely converted to the Protestant Faith this is one of the moments in the 16th century that leads to the fracturing of Christianity and to much of the Bloodshed and the wars that especially the later 16th century was known [Music] for as man explored the planet a Scientific Revolution was also underway by the mid 17th century Navigators had mapped much of the world in remarkable detail Rio De janeo Cusco Mexico City Galileo turned his eyes and his telescope on the heavens here from 1612 are his drawings of sunspots for his insistence that the sun is the center of the universe and the Earth moves around it the church branded him a heretic the pope at the time Pope erban VII who's a very good friend of Galileo said to him look you know I agree with you you're right but I can't approve of this because I'm the pope and if I go against this it looks as if I'm going against the Bible and I'm going to shake to the foundation the belief of the world and the world's Christians not just [Music] Catholics just 380 years later in 1992 Pope John Paul II apologized for the galile or Affair his successor Benedict V 16th has sought middle ground in the centuries old skirmishes between the church and Science in a recent sermon he said even the Big Bang Theory of the creation of the universe is not in conflict with faith because God's mind was behind it this is the the tricky the tricky part and backstage of the Pope's Library science is brought to bear on rumbling books as restoration workers deal with water damage mold and the ravages of time it seems endless this work yes obviously Angela Gan and the others go inch by inch patching and strengthening ancient Pages scratching off paste put on by well-meaning restorers centuries ago paste that's turning acid eating away at the page Mario tiberti seldom reads what he's repairing in it's too distracting especially if the writer happens to be Michelangelo when I work on the Michelangelo papers it was the same that work on Mickey Mouse paper Mickey Mouse a difficult job may take months or even years but consider the result 1,000 years after after us I hope that they can read the same thing that we are reading now [Music] the library's most valued documents go back almost 2,000 years nearly to the time of St Peter the first pope whose tomb Lies Beneath the Basilica that bears his name peteris his letters to the faithful make up two books of the New Testament and here is a copy written in Greek on Papyrus by one of Peter's disciples around the year 200 a mere Century or so after his death in the beginning it was the word and the Word was God and from the same period the Gospel of Luke and part of the Gospel of John also written on Papyrus venerated by early Christians in Egypt preserved for centuries in a desert Monastery H the bread for today give us they contain the oldest known copy of the Lord's Prayer so fragile we were only allowed to see replicas that great treasure of Papyrus I think is the most important Treasure of Christianity with our tour nearly over it seemed as if the libraries collection had come to life in the streets of the Eternal City the centurions and Crusaders the centuries of faith and Folly time present and time past leaving the library we thought there's something something almost magical to be immersed in this place to breathe the air and touch the hand of History the Iger in the Swiss Alps is one of the most forbidding mountains in the world locals call it the ogre and for more than a century this monster of a mountain has attracted Thrill Seekers eager to risk their lives on its nearly vertical slopes more than 60 climbers have frozen or Fallen to their deaths now a new breed of Daredevil is taking on the Iger not by climbing up the mountain but by plunging down it when we heard that after years of planning a new kind of descent was about to be attempted we went to Switzerland to see firsthand something no one had ever tried [Music] before at 13 th000 ft the icy Summit of the Iger is too Steep and Rocky to Simply ski down you ready so JT Holmes is training in three extreme sports to Rocket down more of the Iger than anyone ever has right now he's practicing one of those Sports speed riding on a nearby Mountain slope with his friend and cameraman Valentine Delo to speed ride JT is using skis but he's also attached to a glider likee parachute called a speedwing it allows him to soar over rocks and Ledges impossible to ski you're capable of transitioning in and out of flight at will so you're both skiing and then you're flying and then you're skiing a little bit more exactly but speed riding will only take JT so far down the Iger he'll also ski off a cliff and then freef fall the rest of the way all in one long non-stop breathtaking Ride three Sports One run and they're my three favorite sports so these are the three things you love yeah these are three of the things that I love JT needs perfect conditions for this dangerous descent and so far he hasn't been lucky weather on the Iger is unpredictable Fierce winds whip the slopes and change direction dramatically JT checks the Iger every day to see if he can finally head to the summit the past 2 years he's had to cancel plans because wind blew the snow off the top of the mountain today the conditions are not right well yeah today you can't even see the top of the Iger so first of all you couldn't land a helicopter up there how long have you been planning this uh you know first kind of thoughts of it were upwards of 6 years ago but really focused on it for three why is it taking so long you putting your life you you know in unnecessary risk so I need the right day JT is well aware of the risk he started out as a professional skier the steeper the slope the better Ready set go now at 35 he makes a living through endorsements and filming his remarkable Feats when we first met him six years ago in Norway he and his Daredevil friends were pioneering the use of Wing suits jumping off mountains and flying at more than 100 miles an hour but in the last several years a number of JT's friends and acquaintances have died in wing suit accidents iive Roode who was flying with JT in Norway was killed in 2012 when he struck a cliff and fell a th000 ft JT won't be Wings suit flying off the Iger the most dangerous part of his descent will be after he finishes speed riding when he tries to jettison his skis and freef fall down the rest of the mountain to practice he makes base jumps without skis off a tiny slippery piece of rock he calls the mushroom I stepped off the helicopter onto the mushroom and that was fine I had good grip but then I took another step and there was this really thin ice layer yeah it feels more uneven than I remember it he's off he falls for about 20 seconds accelerating to 110 M an hour before opening his parachute he's string right toward us parachutes open it's a white parachute he's red that was amazing how was it scary when JT jumps off the cliff on the Iger he'll have his skis on properly releasing them is critical what's the danger if you can't get the skis off you're at risk of an unstable parachute deployment or a snag so the the biggest danger is that the ski is going to get tangled up in the parachute that's the risk that risk is foremost in his mind because of what happened to his best friend Shane makoni in 2007 JT and Shane started skiing off mountains dropping their skis then flying away in Wing suits it was a dangerous combination they found thrilling oh yeah another wing suit ski base here we go but on this jump in Italy in 2009 Shane mak's ski release mechanism jammed he couldn't get his skis to come off he crashed into the ground at high speed and was killed instantly that's how he died his skis didn't come off he couldn't get his skis off struggled in his wing suit and and crashed when JT is training at the Iger he wears a t-shirt with a funny picture of Shane on it this Iger descent without his old friend there to help him he's turned to new friends Martin Sherman is an experienced Swiss Mountain guide they can change very quickly from good conditions to really nasty it can turn bad very quickly oh yeah and then then you're in trouble one wrong step and you can plunge off you're You're gone Martin and JT are cautious and methodical making numerous trips of the Iger to plan in advance every part of the complex descent particularly this spot where JT will jump jettison his skis and Begin to freef Fall you're standing there on the top of the mountain what goes through your mind there's two mindsets you know there's the there's the evil coneval which is kind of kamakazi and who knows how it's going to work out and will you hit the landing ramp or not and then there's the James Bond and bond is composed and dialed and he uses clever pieces of gear which he developed with Q to you know outwit his opponents and pull off tremendous things which one are you I'm Bond after days of waiting and years of false starts and canceled attempts on this visit in April the weather on the mountain suddenly clears JT decides the time is right he and his team take a chopper to the Iger Summit I'm checking for landmarks on the way up and um kind of confirming my line my path of descent so you already have a path of descent in your mind it's something that's been memorized the the Iger may be a monster of a mountain but up close the Summit is shockingly small here there is no room for error no room for the helicopter it's not big enough for the helicopter actually land it does what we call a tow in where it just puts its nose into the Iger and it just hovers there how big is the the area that you're standing on at the top the top of the Iger is pretty small it's there is no flat spot you know workable space is three ping pong tables three ping tables yeah that's it something like that yeah a mistake here one wrong Step at 13,000 ft could cost them their lives JT and his team were for almost an hour wearing crampons on their ski boots they dig trenches with ice axes so they won't fall down the nearly vertical slope the surface is Jagged ice not powdery snow and it can easily rip the speed wings I don't like how these things grab the lines they file down the sharp pieces of ice so they won't snag the speedwing lines but the wind kicks up they have to quickly reposition them JT decides it's now or never okay you good okay 3 2 1 go JT launches off the summit Champion speed Rider Valentine deloop quickly follows videotaping for us with a camera on his helmet the ride of a lifetime has begun that's when you turn your skis downhill now doing that that's very committing because you point your skis down the Iger you're you're probably not going to stop till the bottom one way or the other one way or the other JT uses the speedwing for much of The Descent flying over outcroppings of rock and icy slopes too steep to ski he reaches an open slope on the iger's western flank and lands he cuts loose his speedwing so it won't slow him down now he relies solely on his skis and skill it's Black Diamond skiing you're in a really cool place where few people have ski really what you're going try to do is just gather as much speed as possible and just Propel yourself off the cliff the cliff he'll ski off is coming up fast this is the most dangerous part of JT's descent there is no stomping he completes a double back flip to stabilize himself releases his skis then free [Music] Falls his nylon suit is aerodynamically designed propelling him forward so he doesn't crash into any rock ledges he falls nearly 2,000 ft finally opening his parachute woohoo yeah yeah got it he drifts safely to the ground Landing more than a mile below the iger's summit W dud W oh my God that was pretty intense man nailed it nailed it nailed it I don't have words to describe how it felt to go and and pull that off after so much time and you know just kind of a Twisted style of having fun but it was really fun if you're too fast it's a little just kind of scary we assume JT would call it a day after making it down the Iger in one piece but after catching his breath and repacking his equipment he decides to head back to the summit and do the whole run down the mountain once again 3 2 1 go his speed ride off the summit goes perfectly he flies over trouble spots and builds up speed as he approaches the cliff Edge but when he tries to release his skis one of them won't come off this is what killed his best friend Shane makoni JT struggles for several agonizing seconds then finally manages to drop the ski it's a close call but it doesn't seem to stop him from enjoying the rest of the ride could you give it up I believe that I could uh because I don't feel that I'm you know addicted to this sort of uh type of thing this adrenaline or this sort of um high-risk activity you're not an adrenaline junky you don't think absolutely not I I I prefer adrenaline Enthusiast and I truly believe that I don't have to do this and I uh truly believe that I enjoy doing this that's pretty clear you know the day will come when I tone it down significantly but that day is not here yet it's not today

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 684,499

Keywords: 60 minutes, cbs news, news, travel, iraq, garden of eden, eden, middle east, greenland, vatican, vatican library, eiger, switzerland, swiss alps, JT Holmes, anderson cooper, morley safer, scott pelley, sharyn alfonsi, climate change, fascinating places

Id: mash2sLzM1I

Length: 50min 24sec (3024 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 13 2024