JT Holmes' "birdman" days

Imagine skiing down a near-vertical mountain, shooting off a cliff and free-falling hundreds of feet before deploying your parachute. For most of us, that sounds thoroughly unappealing, but not for extreme athlete JT Holmes, who attempts that run on this week’s 60 Minutes.

Filming the run was an adventure in itself, the 60 Minutes team explains to Overtime’s Ann Silvio in the video below.

Holmes admits it’s a “twisted style of having fun,” but he’s very serious about the gravity-defying sports he’s helped pioneer and perfect over the years. 60 Minutes first met him in 2009 (see video above), when he was one of a small band of daredevils jumping from cliffs wearing “wingsuits,” allowing them to soar at speeds approaching 140 miles per hour.

For that story, producer Tom Anderson mounted a small expedition with high-definition cameras to follow Holmes and his fellow wingmen to Norway to see them in action, and to try to understand why they risk their lives.

Holmes, a professional skier, had been using wingsuits for five years. Asked what’s special about the suit, he told Steve Kroft, “It’s just like so many children dream. It’s flying.”