Aaron Ralston's Story
Aaron Ralston, a 27-year-old mountain sports fanatic from
Colorado in the United States, found himself in dire straits* alone in a
canyon* in the desert when a 500kg rock came crashing down the canyon to smash
his right hand and trap it against the canyon wall. A terrible accident, but
the situation was made all the more serious because on this occasion Aaron had
failed to tell anyone where he was going. At the last minute the plans for a
trip with his climbing partners had fallen through, and on the spur of the
moment he decided to head out on his own to cycle up a long mountain trail,
leave his bike and then walk down the Blue John canyon. No one had the
slightest idea where he was.
After three days of not seeing or hearing any sign of life
Aaron realized he would die there if he didn't do something drastic. The course
of action was horrific, but there was no other way. He would have to amputate
his right hand. Fortunately he had a small multi tool knife with him and he had
some straps that he could use to make a tourniquet to stop himself bleeding to
death when he cut the arteries. The knife had two blades. When he tried with the
larger blade he found that it was too blunt to cut the skin.
The following day he found the courage to try the shorter
blade, and with that he managed to cut through the skin. Only when he had made
a large hole in his arm did he realize that it was going to be impossible to
use any of the little tools on his knife to cut through the bones. After
another 24 hours of pain and despair the idea and the strength came to him in a
flash on the sixth day. With a final burst of energy he broke both bones in his
arm and freed himself.
The ordeal was not over, though. He was still a long way
from help. He had to carefully strap up his right arm and then find a way of
lowering himself down a 20m drop in the canyon with a rope and only his left
arm, and then walk the 10 km back to his car. Despite his ingenuity* and all
his efforts he would have bled to death if it hadn't been for a very happy
coincidence: the moment he got out of the canyon into the open desert the
rescue helicopter just happened to be flying overhead.
One of the doctors at the hospital recalls being impressed
to see Ralston walk into the hospital on his own, in spite of his injuries and
the grueling experience of being in the desert for six days with almost nothing
to eat and only a couple of liters of water. He describes the amputation as
remarkable. "It's a perfect example of someone improvising in a dire
situation*," he said. "He took a small knife and was able to amputate
his arm in such a way that he did not bleed to death."
Slim and pale with short reddish-brown hair, Ralston
believes that his story was not simply about an isolated individual who rose to
a formidable challenge. For him there was a spiritual* dimension to the
experience. In his news conference he said, "I may never fully understand
the spiritual aspects of what I experienced, but I will try. The source of the
power I felt was the thoughts and prayers of many people, most of whom I will
never know."
DAY ONE: SATURDAY,
APRIL 26, 9 A.M.
Under a bluebird sky out in the desert, I leave my truck where the trail begins
for Horseshoe Canyon. My plan is to make a 30-mile circuit cycling up Horshoe
Canyon, leaving the bike at the top and then coming down Blue John Canyon on
foot.
The trip was a last-minute decision after some friends had
called off a mountaineering trip. Usually I would leave a detailed schedule
with my roommates, but since I left without knowing what I was going to do, the
only word I gave was "Utah."
Though the Blue John circuit will be only a day trip, I'm
carrying a 13 kilo pack, most of the weight taken up with climbing gear for
descending the steep canyon system, food, and four liters of water.
By 2:30, I'm about seven miles into the canyon, at the
midpoint of my descent, where the canyon is not more than 1 meter wide. To get
down a steep drop I try to hang off the edge of a boulder* which is stuck
between the walls of the canyon. Just before I let go of it I feel it move and
I know this isn't good. As soon as I land on the floor of the canyon I hardly
have time to look up before the boulder comes crashing down. In the narrow
space I cannot avoid the boulder. Before I have time to realize what is
happening it bounces against one wall and then smashes my right arm against the
other wall and stops there.
The agony throws me into a panic. "F***!" I yank*
my arm three times in a futile attempt to pull it out from under the rock. But
I'm stuck. There is no way I can pull it out or move the boulder.
There is no feeling in my right hand at all and it is
already turning grey.
My immediate worry is water. The average survival time in
the desert without water is between two and three days. My next thought is
escape. Eliminating ideas that are just too dumb (like breaking open my AA
batteries on the boulder and hoping the acid* eats into the stone but not my
arm), I decide to try to chip away the rock around my hand with my multi tool
knife. This proves to be a terribly slow process.
Even if I wanted to sleep, I couldn't. My hand is trapped too
high up so I can't lie down, and as soon as my knees bend and my weight pulls
on my wrist* the pain is agonizing. Using a rope and some of my climbing gear I
manage to fix a kind of seat with my left hand. That helps me take the weight
off my feet although I soon realize that the straps restrict the blood supply
and I can't sit in it for more than 20 minutes.
DAY FOUR
Stress turns into pessimism. Without enough water to wait for rescue, without a
tool to crack the boulder, without a system to lift it, I have one course of
action. I speak slowly out loud: "You're goanna have to cut your arm
off."
I take my multi tool and, without thinking, open the long
blade*. I hold it with the blade against the upper part of my forearm.
Surprising myself, I press on the blade and slowly draw it across my forearm.
Nothing happens. Huh. I press harder. Still nothing. No cut, no blood, nothing.
Back and forth, I vigorously saw at my arm, growing more frustrated with each
attempt. Exasperated, I give up. Sh*t! The damn blade won't even break the
skin. How the hell am I going to saw through two bones with a knife that won't
even cut my skin?
DAY FIVE
Slowly, I become aware of the cold stare of the second shorter blade of my
knife. Gathering my courage, I take the handle in my fist*, I pick a spot on
the top of my forearm. I hesitate. Then I violently thrust the blade down,
burying it in the meat of my forearm. "Holy crap, Aaron," I say out
loud. "What did you just do?"
I am suddenly curious. There is barely any sensation of the
blade below skin level. My nerves seem to be concentrated in the outer layers
of my arm. I open an inch-wide hole and note that there is remarkably little
blood; the capillaries* must have closed down for the time being. Fascinated, I
poke at the wound* with the tool. Ouch.
I lean back in my harness* and slip into another trance*.
Color bursts in my mind, and then I walk through the canyon wall, stepping into
a living room. A blond-haired three-year-old boy in a red polo shirt comes
running across a sunlit wooden floor in what I somehow know is my future home.
The boy is my own. I bend to lift him up with my left arm, using my handless
right arm to balance him, and we laugh together as I swing him up to my
shoulder.
Then, with a shock, the vision disappears. I'm back in the
canyon, although there are still echoes of his joyful sounds in my mind. Before
this I had thought that I would die where I stood before help arrived, but now
I believe I will live.
That belief, that boy, changes everything for me.
DAY SIX:
With five days of desert dust on my contact lenses, my eyes hurt at every
blink, and I can no longer see properly. Sip* after sip of acidic urine has
left my mouth sore. I can't hold my head upright; it leans against the canyon
wall. I am a zombie. I am the undead.
Miserable, I watch another empty hour pass by. The boost I
felt from my vision of the boy has vanished entirely. I have nothing whatsoever
to do. I have no life. There is nothing that gives even a slight hint that this
awful stillness will break. But I can make it break.
Out of curiosity, I poke my thumb with my knife blade twice.
The second time the blade breaks the skin as if it were cutting into butter,
and there is a hiss of gas escaping. The rot has advanced more quickly than I
guessed. Though the smell is faint it is the unmistakable smell of death.
I react in a fury, trying to pull my arm straight out from
under the rock, never wanting more than I do right now to disconnect myself
from this rotting limb.
I don't want it. It's not a part of me. It's garbage.
I thrash myself forward and back, side to side, up and down,
down and up. I scream out in pure hate, shrieking as I hit my body against the
canyon walls. And then I feel my arm bend unnaturally. This is when I suddenly
see the light. Something like a holy intervention brings me to a halt.
If I bend my arm far enough, I can break my forearm bones.
My God, Aaron, that's it, that's it. THAT'S F***ING IT!
There is no hesitation. I barely realize what I'm about to
do. I put my left hand under the boulder and push hard, harder, HARDER! to put
a maximum force on the bones above my wrist. As I slowly bend my arm down to
the left there is a sudden snap like a distant gun shot.
Sweating and euphoric, I touch my right arm. Both bones have
broken in the same place, just above my wrist.
I am overcome with excitement. Hurrying to get to work with
the shorter and sharper blade, I place it between two blue veins and push it
into my wrist.
The skin hurt quite a lot but the muscles don't hurt as
much. As I cut them I have to be careful not to sever the arteries until I get
the tourniquet* on my arm. A really tough part is the tendon because the knife
just won't cut through it. There are no nerves in the tendon so I don't
hesitate to put the blade away and take out the little set of pliers* on the
multi tool to grab and tear the tendon to pieces bit by bit. Then I come to the
nerve, which I know is going to be the most painful part of it. Little do I
know just how agonizing it is going to be? I try to cut through it as fast as
possible and I suddenly feel as if my entire arm has been thrust into a tub* of
boiling water - the sensation of burning shooting up my arm.
Now there are only a few more sections of muscle, a little
bit of skin left. I stretch my body tight against that last piece of skin and
chop it with the knife, and at last I am free. I have liberated myself. I drop
back against the canyon wall and for the first time in six days my feet are in
a different part of the canyon than where I had been trapped. And my body, all
of a sudden, is overcome with euphoria. It is as if I am recalling all of the
happiest moments of the past 27 years and tasting in them the promise of at
least another 27 years of life. I am reborn. Having been standing in my grave,
writing my will and scratching "Rest in peace" on the wall of the
canyon, all of that is gone - I am alive again. It is undoubtedly the sweetest
moment that I will ever experience.
