This is an updated version of a story first published on Nov. 26, 2023. The original video can be viewed here.A bus filled with widows of war and their children left Ukraine last August bound for the Austrian alps. As we first told you in November, they'd been invited to a charity summer camp hosted by Nathan Schmidt, an American Marine who knows, all too well, the bereavement of war. Mountain climbing was Schmidt's path to recovery from three combat tours in Iraq.
Nathan Schmidt's week-long summer camp for bereaved Ukrainian children and their mothers began with training in the Austrian Alps. Then, serious work began—the kind of challenge that might rise to a revelation.The Hohe Tauren National Park embraces some of the highest peaks in the Austrian Alps and a feat of engineering. The Mooserboden Dam would be the first big challenge for the 13 widows and their 20 children. A zipline flew them to the concrete face.