The Eiger is THE most infamous flag bearer of mountain danger in Europe. Towering menacingly 3,970m above the paradoxically quaint chocolate box alpine town of Grindelwald, the mountain has claimed the lives of at least 64 climbers since the 1930s.
This infamy was the draw for extreme skier JT Holmes, who decided that he’d like to speed ski down from the summit, then discard his speed skiing chute, before skiing off the side of the mountain into a wing-suited base jump, finally deploying a parachute to land safely on the valley floor.
This video clip put together by US TV news channel CBS shows the successful stunt sequence along with interviews of the filming team – and crucially what was going though their minds when Holmes almost dies when he decides to repeat the stunt.
Anyone who doesn’t get sweaty palms watching Holmes struggle to discard his second ski while he plummets down the face of the Eiger, unable to open his main shoot is either completely heartless or as crazy as Holmes himself.
As we said, when anyone says “just one more time” think twice…
