Anderson cooper j. T. Launches off the summit. Champion speed rider Valentin Delluc quickly follows, videotaping for us with a camera on his helmet. The ride of a lifetime has begun. Youre standing there on the top of the mountain. What goes through your mind . Theres two mindsets, you know . Theres the. Theres the evel knievel, which is kind of kamikaze. And then, theres the james bond. Cooper which one are you . Im bond. Im steve kroft. Im lesley stahl. Im anderson cooper. Im bill whitaker. Im scott pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 minutes. Before fibromyalgia, i was a doer. I was active. Then the chronic, widespread pain drained my energy. My doctor said moving more helps ease fibromyalgia pain. She also prescribed lyrica. Fibromyalgia is thought to be the result of overactive nerves. Lyrica is believed to calm these nerves. For some, lyrica can significantly relieve fibromyalgia pain and improve function, so i feel better. 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Try zyrtec® for powerful allergy relief. And zyrtec® is different than claritin®. Because it starts working faster on the first day you take it. Try zyrtec®. Muddle no more®. A big mac . And a grand mac . Man, theres a big mac for every move. We talking about the left right left crossover what . we got a big mac for that and we talking about 30 feet nothing but net. Splash we definitely got a big mac for that to the hoop star. Alleyoop. Watch your head. Ohhhh theres a big mac for that juicy, cheesy, iconic big mac. Now in three sizes. I want to see what you got. All the way up. Get that out of here, boy. Stahl nobelprizewinning colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia marquez once wrote of a mythical town in the middle of the jungle whose residents suffer from a mysterious affliction that erases their memories. Today, in a region of colombia called antioquia, reality appears to be imitating fiction, in a way that may answer questions for all of us. As we first reported last fall, antioquia is home to the largest concentration in the world of people who carry a rare genetic mutation that makes them 100 certain to develop alzheimers disease. And as devastating as alzheimers is anywhere, this is a particularly cruel version it strikes when people are in their mid40s, and leads to death about a decade later. It is a tragic situation, but a perfect scientific laboratory. And its now the center of a multimillion dollar, n. I. H. Backed study thats trying to find out, for the first time, whether alzheimers disease may be preventable. These are the Andes Mountains and lush countryside of antioquia, colombia, whose capital city, medellin, was once famous for murder and the drug cartel of pablo escobar. Today, medellin or medejin, as its pronounced here is peaceful. But for some families here, theres still a battle going on, a battle against an insidious disease. This family mother cecilia, her seven children, and grandchildren lost its patriarch, alonso. Freddie for me, my father was number one. Stahl freddie, the oldest, remembers his dad always eager to join in and play with him and his friends. Cecilia translated he was a very joyful person. He loved to dance. He was a really nice person, a very good father. Before the disease. Stahl when it first started, what were you noticing that made you think hes hes different . Cecilia translated he started asking, what is the date today . Do i have to go to work . And we got concerned. Stahl alonso at the time was in his mid40s, so the memory loss and confusion made no sense. His doctor suggested exercise and vitamins, but alonso just got worse, forgetting the names of his children, getting lost and disoriented. His son victor had to help him get dressed. Victor translated i gave him his shirt, i told him dad, come, ill help you put your shirt on, and the first thing he did was to grab it and put it on through his feet. Stahl did he understand what was happening to him . Victor translated there were moments of lucidity, where he would ask me and say, son, whats happening to me . Why dont i remember . I dont remember my children, or my wife. I dont know who i am. Stahl his son julio took him back to see the doctor julio translated when i asked the doctor, i told him, doctor, i am not leaving here sorry. Until you tell me what is wrong with my father. Stahl the doctor sent them to francisco lopera, a neurologist at the university of antioquia who knew exactly what was wrong with alonso, because hed become the local authority on a rash of earlyonset alzheimers cases in and around medellin. Francisco lopera they were getting disease very early in the life. Stahl it all began many years earlier, back in the 1980s, when lopera was a young medical resident. He had read about small numbers of people scattered around the world who had developed alzheimers in their 40s. So when a 47yearold man came into his medellin clinic with alzheimerslike symptoms, he was intrigued, and decided to investigate. You met this one man, and you decided to go to where he was from . Lopera i decided to go to the town where he was living. Stahl lopera learned that the mans father and grandfather had also lost their memories in their 40s. Then, a few years later, another similar patient came into the clinic, this time a 42yearold woman from a town 40 miles away. Dr. Loperas thennurse, Lucia Madrigal, asked if any of her relatives also started losing their memories when they were young. Lucia madrigal translated they told us yes, that the father, the uncles, the grandfather, the great grandfather, so i started making a Little Family tree, on one page, and i showed it to dr. Lopera. And i told him, look what we have here. What is this . So many with the same disease. Stahl and so began a detective hunt that lasted more than a decade. Lopera and madrigal traveled all over the region, finding more and more people afflicted with earlyonset alzheimers, and compiling family trees. They thought it might be genetic, so madrigal spent days at parish churches, poring over heavy ledgers where priests for generations had recorded village births, marriages, and deaths. Thanks to these meticulous records, she was able to trace the disease back hundreds of years, and to make an important discovery the different families were actually one huge extended family, connected generations back by common ancestors who had died young, with an unusual cause of death written down by the priest softening of the brain. This is what softening of the brain looks like in real life. Fernando is 46 years old, a descendant of that second patient, years ago. He started forgetting things when he was in his late 30s, and now can no longer speak, feed himself, or do just about anything on his own. His aunt takes care of him round the clock, just as she did with his mother, when she got the disease at the same age. Norelly is at an even later stage of the disease. Despite her appearance, she is just 58 years old. Patients were going from mild symptoms to complete dementia and then death within about a decade as dr. Lopera showed us in these cognitive test results. Lopera you can see, at 38 stahl even at 38, this man struggled as many older alzheimers patients do to copy a complex drawing accurately. Lopera at 45. Stahl and things got worse from there. Lopera he lost more. At 50. Stahl ah oh lopera at 51. Stahl oh dr. Lopera was convinced that what he and madrigal were discovering was scientifically important, but even as they found more patients and more related families, he couldnt get anyone outside colombia to take notice. Until 1993, when a harvard professor came to give a talk about alzheimers in bogota, several hours away. Ken kosik there was a person in the audience, francisco lopera, who came up after the talk and said, you know, theres i have a family here that w has earlyonset alzheimers. Stahl ken kosik, now at u. C. Santa barbara, was that professor. A family. Couldve been four people. Kosik it couldve been just four people. But he started to tell me how many it was. And as i listened to him, i became just so absorbed and taken with what he was telling me that i changed all my plans, went with him to medelliin. And we began a collaboration that goes on to this day. Stahl they showed kosik what Lucia Madrigal showed us the family tree they had compiled, based on all that searching through church records, for just one of the affected families, going back all the way to the 1800s. This is one family . laughs madrigal una sola stahl it just kept unfolding. And unfolding. Covering these pages are small squares representing men, circles for women. The coloredin squares and circles mean the person got sick with alzheimers at an early age. Look, she had these sons and a daughter. And then it just kept going down through the generations madrigal si. Kosik when we looked at the family trees, about 50 of the offspring were getting the disease. Thats a clear signature of a gene. Stahl but what gene . Kosik connected dr. Lopera with leading geneticists in the u. S. , and they started collecting blood samples and searching. Within a year, a major breakthrough they found a specific mutation in a gene on chromosome 14 one tiny flaw in the d. N. A. Responsible for all this familys suffering. The discovery was published in 1997 in the journal of the american medical association. Lopera had identified the largest concentration of early onset alzheimers cases in the world. If a person has that mutation, do they get alzheimers . Kosik yes, they do. Stahl if they have it, they definitely get the disease. Kosik right. There are some mutations where you dont definitely get it. But this is a bad one. And if you have this mutation, you get it. Stahl for families like alonsos, discovering the mutation was a blessing a crucial first step toward finding a way to fight the disease. But it was also a curse, because it meant that anyone whose parent had the mutation, has a 50 50 chance of having inherited it too. Do any of you know if you have that mutation . Do you know . Victor no. Freddie nobody knows. Stahl nobody knows. Well, somebody knows. Dr. Lopera and his team have been testing for the mutation and compiling a database, but their policy is not to tell family members if they have the mutation or not and not even to reveal the results to dr. Lopera, since at this point, there is nothing that can be done to help. Cecelia translated sometimes i ask, which one will get it . But i throw that thought away, because i dont want to think about that. I pray a lot to god that none of them gets it. I dont want to see my children with that disease. Stahl each one of you knows, because of your father, that you have a 5050 chance. So what kind of a weight does that put on you, day in and day out . Julio translated ive even prayed to god that if if theres one person who has to have the disease, i say to god, let it be me. Sara translated i thank god that im a nurse and that i would be able to take care of them, but i tell myself, first i had to go through it with my dad, the experience of the disease, and i may have to go through it with one of my siblings, or with several, we dont know. Stahl sara told us she would love to have children of her own, but given her risk of developing the disease, shes decided against it. Sara translated so that my children dont have to go through my same experience. Stahl youve been working on this 30 years. How do you cope with all this pain . Lopera crying stahl it was not the response we had expected. Its that hard . Its that hard. But dr. Lopera knew that even in the midst of all this tragedy, there might just be a glimmer of hope. Because what he had discovered in these families hundreds of people destined to develop alzheimers, and easily identifiable with a simple genetic test presented a unique scientific opportunity to test whether its possible to step in and stop earlyonset, and maybe all, alzheimers disease before it starts. That part of the story, when we come back. Good is in every blue diamond almond. And once good gets going, theres no stopping it. Blue diamond almonds. Get your good going. When i was too busy with the kids to get a repair estimate. I just snapped a photo and got an estimate in 24 hours. My Insurance Company definitely doesnt have that. You can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™ Liberty Mutual insurance only at t offers you all your live channels and dvr on your devices. Datafree. Entertainment. Your way. Only from at t. Announcer actor, scholar, athlete and activist, paul robeson used his acting ability to advance racial equality. Learn more at the. Stahl alzheimers disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the united states. More than five million americans have alzheimers right now, and given the aging baby boomer population, that number is projected to nearly triple by midcentury. Yet unlike many other leading killers, there is no effective treatment. An alzheimers diagnosis is essentially a prescription for a slow descent into oblivion an inexorable loss of the memories, spatial skills, and ability to think that make us who we are. Earlyonset alzheimers patients, like the hundreds of family members in colombia, are a tiny fraction of the whole, but to scientists, they could be everything because they are offering researchers something they have never had before a way to test whether intervening, years before people start having symptoms, might halt the disease in its tracks. Answers are still years away, but with more than 1,000 americans developing alzheimers every day, a way to prevent it cannot come soon enough. The scene we witnessed in dr. Pierre tariots exam room at the Banner Alzheimers Institute in phoenix is one that plays out in neurologists offices every day. Pierre tariot so if i asked you what city were in right now, what would you say . Norm laughs uh, you know, right, i dont know at this moment. Stahl norm, age 72, has been diagnosed with alzheimers the typical, lateinlife form so many of us fear. It begins with mild memory and thinking problems, and spirals into fullon dementia. Tariot who is that young lady over there . Norm betsy. Tariot betsy. And is she a friend . Norm yes. Tariot how do you know betsy . Norm because ive been loving her for a long time. Tariot okay. Is she your sister . Norm a little bit of both. Tariot uhhuh. Is she your wife . Norm i dont think so. I think youre somebody. I wish i was, but stahl theyve been married 51 years. Unlike earlyonset alzheimers, theres been no single gene identified that causes this. Tariot now touch your nose. Stahl no way to know who among us is destined to get it. What percentage of all people are going to get alzheimers . Tariot 1 of us, 60 or older, will have a dementia like alzheimers disease. But by the time you hit 85 stahl what percent . Tariot that, that percentage is approaching 40ish percent. Norm thats a dogan and these are gogans. Tariot alzheimers disease has been called out by the World Health Organization as the coming pandemic of the west. We have to do something to put it behind us. Claudia kawas can you draw the numbers for a clock . Stahl but dr. Claudia kawas, a leading alzheimers researcher and clinician at the university of californiairvine, says shes frustrated that she cant offer her patients any hope. Kawas i have to say, ive been doing this now for a third of a century. And when i started, i just never would have believed we would still not be closer than we are now to making a real difference. It has been a little disappointing. Stahl it hasnt been for lack of trying. Kawas gave us a quick primer on the telltale signs of alzheimers in the brain after autopsy. Kawas every place you see a brown spot, that is a senile amyloid plaque. In contrast, you see these black things that tend to be triangular shape. Those are what we call neurofibrillary tangles. Stahl the relationship between plaques and tangles isnt completely understood. But because its been shown that amyloid plaques build up in the brain before tangles, and years before patients develop symptoms, pharmaceutical companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars since the early 2000s developing drugs to remove amyloid from the brain, and hundreds of millions more to test those drugs in patients like norm. Of all the trials that have been done, what percent have succeeded . Tariot about 1 . Stahl in other words, a resounding failure. So what does that say, do you think . Kawas well, it says either amyloid is not the right thing to go after, or it says we need to remove it earlier on in the process, before its made all the other things cascade after it. You know, if you give a polio vaccine once somebody has polio, you can understand why it doesnt work. Stahl youre saying that maybe those drugs havent worked because the person already had alzheimers . Kawas exactly. And maybe if we give them early enough, it might work. Stahl but how can you test drugs on people before they develop the disease, when you dont know who among us is going to get it . Dr. Tariot and the executive director at the Banner Alzheimers Institute, dr. Eric reiman, realized there was a place where you could know who was going to get alzheimers antioquia. Kosik and thats when my phone began to ring. Stahl by then, ken kosik had been studying the colombian extended family for 15 years. Kosik received a call from the people at banner. And they said, you know, you have this family. We know when theyre going to get it. We know whos going to get it. Can we start treating before the disease strikes . Stahl kosik connected tariot and reiman with dr. Lopera, who by that time had identified hundreds of people who carried the gene mutation, guaranteeing that they would be struck with alzheimers in the prime of their lives. Reiman and tariot traveled to medellin and met with both healthy and sick members of the extended family. Is this particular family, in the world extraordinary . Tariot theres nothing else like it. The idea that theres this concentration within roughly 100 miles of each other is just an extraordinary phenomenon. Stahl and a perfect scientific laboratory. To lay the groundwork for a large clinical trial, banner flew a group of extended family members from medellin to phoenix for pet scans. One goal to compare the brains of those with and without the mutation, years before any memory loss began, when they were in their 30s. Dr. Reiman showed us the results. Eric reiman this is somebody who doesnt have the gene. They have no plaques in the brain. Stahl but in members of the family with the mutation, it was a different story. Reiman extensive amyloid deposition in the brain. Stahl thats the red. Reiman red is more amyloid. But yellow is also amyloid. Stahl this brain had even more. The images showed that amyloid plaques build up in the brain more than a decade before memory loss begins. So if a drug could remove that red and yellow, maybe the disease could be prevented. Banner developed a plan for a multimillion dollar drug trial, and convened a meeting with leading scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and representatives of the n. I. H. Tariot the end of the meeting, each scientist was allowed to say one closing thought. And francisco had the last word. Stahl lopera . Tariot and he paused a long time. And you could hear a pin drop in the room. Lopera i said to them, we the families are waiting for you. Stahl theyre waiting for you. Tariot thats the point when, you know, the goose bumps came, and we said, we really have to make this work. We really do. Stahl and they did. With a commitment of 15 million from n. I. H. , another 15 million from philanthropists, and the rest from drug company genentech, the trial on an immunotherapy drug to remove amyloid plaque enrolled its first patient three years ago, and theyve been enrolling more people ever since. Freddie they told me about the study and i said yes. Ill go right away, and anything that you need it, i am here. Stahl freddie and all his siblings signed up. The plan is to enroll a total of 300 members of the extended family who are healthy and have no memory loss yet; 200 who have the mutation; and another 100 who dont. That way, no one will learn their genetic status just by being accepted into the study. Of the 200 with the mutation, half will get injections of the drug; the other half will be injected with a harmless placebo. The study is doubleblind neither patients nor investigators will know whos getting what. They have to come in every two weeks, for at least five years, long enough to see whether the group taking the drug does better than the group taking placebo. Final results arent expected until 2021. Is this the first time in all these years of seeing these patients that you can actually offer them hope . Lopera yes, this is the first time. Because in the past we only offer them education better quality of life, but no hope to have a solution. And now they have hope, a big hope. Stahl what would be the best outcome . Tariot nobody who receives the immunotherapy experiences any worsening of their thinking or memory ability. Doesnt change at all. Doesnt decline. That would be fabulous. Thats a stretch goal. Stahl and that would be just the beginning. Kawas if it makes a difference for them, i think theres a reasonable chance it could make a difference for all the rest of the people who get alzheimers disease. Stahl and that of course is the ultimate goal to help prevent the lateinlife form of alzheimers that were all susceptible to. The hope is that one day, every one of us could be screened and when necessary, treated, before problems begin. Kawas it might be the case that, just like when you go to your doctor to get your cholesterol checked in your blood to see if you need drugs to lower your cholesterol, you would go, and get an amyloid pet scan, and it would be part of stahl routine. Kawas routine prevention. Stahl what if the drug removes the amyloid, and they still get the disease . Kawas i think thatll mean that there are other things we need to be targeting besides amyloid. Stahl but will you say that the drug test was successful . Kawas hard as this is to say, yes. I think that we need to know the answer. Stahl the answer to whether the fields focus on amyloid plaque removal for the last 15 years has been a failure. If this test doesnt work, they will at least know they need to go in a different direction. You know, victor, all the other drug trials that have gone on for years have all failed. Victor translated yes. Stahl you know that. Victor translated but this is going to be the exception. This is the exception laughs stahl if it does work, this saves this community. Kosik wouldnt that be amazing . Stahl that would be amazing. Kosik to me, i am always impressed that these families that come from such a remote area of the world, have the potential for informing all of us, globally, about a path forward for conquering alzheimers. Theres no other way to say this. Its over. Ive found a permanent escape from monotony. Together, we are perfectly balanced. Our senses awake. Our hearts racing as one. I know this is sudden, but they say. If you love something set it free. 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It can cause harm or death to an unborn baby. Dont take entresto with an ace inhibitor or aliskiren. If youve had angioedema while taking an ace or arb medicine, dont take entresto. The most serious side effects are angioedema, low blood pressure, kidney problems, or high potassium in your blood. Tomorrow, im gonna step out with my favorite girl. Ask your doctor about entresto. And help make the gift of tomorrow possible. Anderson cooper the eiger 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 thrillseekers eager to risk their lives on its nearly vertical slopes. More than 60 climbers have frozen or fallen to their deaths. As we first reported in 2015, a new breed of daredevil is taking on the eiger 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 before. At 13,000 feet, the icy summit of the eiger is too steep and rocky to simply ski down. J. T. Holmes you ready . Cooper . So j. T. Holmes is training in three extreme sports, to rocket down more of the eiger than anyone ever has. Right now, he is practicing one of those sports, speed riding, on a nearby mountain slope, with his friend and cameraman, Valentin Delluc. To speed ride, j. T. Is using skis, but hes also attached to a gliderlike parachute called a speed wing. It allows him to soar over rocks and ledges impossible to ski. Holmes youre capable of transitioning in and out of flight at will. Cooper so youre both skiing and then youre flying. And then youre skiing a little bit more. Holmes exactly. Cooper but speed riding will only take j. T. So far down the eiger. Hell also ski off a cliff, and then freefall the rest of the way, all in one long, nonstop, breathtaking ride. Holmes three sports, one run. And theyre my three favorite sports, so. Cooper these are the three things you love . Holmes yeah. These are three of the things that i love. Cooper j. T. Needs perfect conditions for this dangerous descent, and so far, he hasnt been lucky. Weather on the eiger is unpredictable. Fierce winds whip the slopes and change direction dramatically. J. T. Checks the eiger every day to see if he can finally head to the summit. The past two years, hes had to cancel plans because wind blew the snow off the top of the mountain. Today, the conditions are not right . Holmes well, yeah, today you cant even see the top of the eiger. So, first of all, you couldnt land a helicopter up there. Cooper how long have you been planning this . Holmes you know, the first kind of thoughts of it were upwards of six years ago, but really focused on it for three. Cooper why has it taken so long . Holmes youd be putting your life, you know, in unnecessary risk. So i need the right day. Cooper j. T. Is well aware of the risk. He started out as a professional skier the steeper the slope, the better. J. T. Holmes ready, set, go cooper now, at 36, he makes a living through endorsements and filming his remarkable feats. When we first met him seven years ago in norway, he and his daredevil friends were pioneering the use of wingsuits, jumping off mountains and flying at more than 100 miles an hour. But in the last several years, a number of j. T. s friends and acquaintances have died in wingsuit accidents. Eiliv ruud, who was flying with j. T. In norway, was killed in 2012 when he struck a cliff and fell 1,000 feet. J. T. Wont be wingsuitflying off the eiger. The most dangerous part of his descent will be after he finishes speed riding, when he tries to jettison his skis and freefall 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. Holmes i stepped off the helicopter onto the mushroom, and that was fine. I had a good grip. But then i took another step and there was this really thin ice layer. Yeah, it feels a little more uneven than i remember it. Cooper hes off. He falls for about 20 seconds, accelerating to 110 miles an hour before opening his parachute. Hes starting right toward us. Parachute is open. Its a white parachute hes red. That was amazing. How was it . Holmes laughs scary. Cooper when j. T. Jumps off the cliff on the eiger, hell have his skis on. Properly releasing them is critical. Whats the danger if you cant get the skis off . Holmes youre at risk of an unstable parachute deployment or a snag. Cooper so, the biggest danger is that the ski is going to get tangled up in the parachute . Holmes thats the risk. Cooper that risk is foremost in his mind because of what happened to his best friend, shane mcconkey. In 2007, j. T. And shane started skiing off mountains, dropping their skis, and then flying away in wingsuits. It was a dangerous combination they found thrilling. Shane mcconkey oh, yeah, another wingsuit ski base. Here we go. Cooper but on this jump in italy in 2009, shane mcconkeys ski release mechanism jammed. He couldnt get his skis to come off. He crashed into the ground at high speed, and was killed instantly. Thats how he died, his skis didnt come off . Holmes he couldnt get his skis off, struggled in his wingsuit, and. And crashed. Cooper when j. T. Is training at the eiger, he wears a tshirt with a funny picture of shane on it. Holmes this eiger descent. Cooper without his old friend there to help him, he has turned to new friends. Martin schurmann is an experienced Swiss Mountain guide. Martin schurmann it can change very quickly from good conditions to really nasty. Cooper it can turn bad very quickly . Schurmann oh, yeah. And then, youre in trouble. Cooper one wrong step, and you can plunge off. Schurmann youre. Youre gone. Cooper martin and j. T. Are cautious and methodical, making numerous trips up the eiger to plan, in advance, every part of the complex descent, particularly this spot where j. T. Will jump, jettison his skis, and begin to freefall. Youre standing there on the top of the mountain, what goes through your mind . Holmes theres two mindsets, you know . Theres the. Theres the evel knievel, which is kind of kamikaze, and who knows how its going to work out . And will you hit the landing ramp or not . And then, theres 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, and. Cooper which one are you . Holmes im bond. laughs cooper after days of waiting, and years of false starts and cancelled attempts, on this visit in april, the weather on the mountain suddenly clears. J. T. Decides the time is right. He and his team take a chopper to the eiger summit. Holmes im checking for landmarks on the way up and kind of confirming my line, my path of descent. Cooper so you already have a path of descent in your mind . Holmes its something thats been memorized. Cooper the eiger 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. Its not big enough for the helicopter to land . Holmes no, it. It does what we call a towin, where it just puts its nose into the eiger. And it just hovers there. Cooper how big is the. The area that youre standing on at the top . Holmes the. The top of the eiger is pretty small. Its. There is no flat spot. You know, workable space is. Three pingpong tables. Cooper three pingpong tables . Holmes yeah. Cooper thats it . Holmes Something Like that, yeah. Cooper a mistake here, one wrong step at 13,000 feet could cost them their lives. J. T. And his team work for almost an hour. Wearing crampons on their ski boots, they dig trenches with ice axes so they wont fall down the nearly vertical slope. The surface is jagged ice, not powdery snow, and it can easily rip the speed wings. Holmes i dont like how those things grab the lines. Cooper they file down the sharp pieces of ice so they wont snag the speed wing lines. But the wind kicks up and they have to quickly reposition them. J. T. Decides its now or never. Holmes okay, youre good . Valentin delluc yeah. Holmes okay, three, two, one. Go cooper j. T. Launches off the summit. Champion speed rider Valentin Delluc quickly follows, videotaping for us with a camera on his helmet. The ride of a lifetime has begun. Holmes thats when you turn your skis downhill. Now, doing that, thats very committing. Because, you know, you point your skis down the eiger, youre probably not going to stop till the bottom. Cooper one way or the other. Holmes one way or the other. Cooper j. T. Uses the speed wing for much of the descent, flying over outcroppings of rock and icy slopes too steep to ski. He reaches an open slope on the eigers western flank and lands. He cuts loose his speed wing so it wont slow him down. Now, he relies solely on his skis and skill. Holmes its Black Diamond skiing. Youre in a really cool place where few people have skied. Really, what youre going to try to do is just gather as much speed as possible and just propel yourself off the cliff. Cooper the cliff hell ski off is coming up fast. This is the most dangerous part of j. T. s descent. There is no stopping. He completes a doubleback flip to stabilize himself, releases his skis, then freefalls. His nylon suit is aerodynamically designed, propelling him forward, so he doesnt crash into any rock ledges. He falls nearly 2,000 feet, finally opening his parachute. Holmes whoohoo yeah yeah, buddy whoohoo whoa cooper he drifts safely to the ground, landing more than a mile below the eiger summit. Holmes whoa, dude whoa oh, my god, that was pretty intense, man. Nailed it. Cooper nailed it . Holmes nailed it. I dont have words to describe how it felt to go and pull that off after so much time. And, you know, its kind of a twisted style of having fun, but it was really fun. If youre too fast, its a little just kind of scary. Cooper we assumed j. T. Would call it a day after making it down the eiger 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. Holmes three, two, one, go cooper 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 wont come off. This is what killed his best friend, shane mcconkey. J. T. Struggles for several agonizing seconds, then finally manages to drop the ski. Its a close call, but it doesnt seem to stop him from enjoying the rest of the ride. Could you give it up . Holmes i believe that i could. Because i dont feel that im you know, addicted to this sort of. Type of thing, this adrenaline, or this sort of highrisk activity. Cooper youre not an adrenaline junkie, you dont think . Holmes absolutely not. I. I prefer adrenaline enthusiast. laughter i truly believe that i dont have to do this. And i truly believe that i enjoy doing this and. Cooper thats pretty clear. Holmes the day will come when i tone it down significantly. Cooper but that day is not here yet . Holmes its not today. Howd they get those howd they get those pictures . Go to 60minutesovertime. 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If were talking about a deeper aquifer, that could take tens or hundreds of years to recharge. Stahl in spite of months of rain this winter, the groundwater crisis is far from over. A new nasa report says the Central Valley is continuing to sink. In some places, the ground has dropped as much as 20 inches since may, 2015. Im lesley stahl. Well be back next week with a brand new edition of 60 minutes. Before i had the shooting, burning, pins and needles of diabetic nerve pain these feet. Jumped into city life as a kid. Raised two rough and tumble boys. And kept my town moving. But i couldnt bear my diabetic nerve pain any longer. So i talked to my doctor and he prescribed lyrica. Nerve damage from diabetes causes diabetic nerve pain. Lyrica is fda approved to treat this pain from moderate to even severe diabetic nerve pain. Lyrica may cause serious allergic reactions or suicidal thoughts or actions. 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