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 realised 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 multitool 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 realise 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 gruelling experience of
being in the desert for six days with almost nothing to eat and only a couple of
litres 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."
Vocabulary
canyon - a valley with steep sides - a good place for the sport of canyoning
dire straits/dire situation - a very difficult situation
ingenuity - cleverness
spiritual - to do with the soul and religiou
Aaron's own account of his ordeal
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 litres 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 metre 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 realise 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 multitool 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 realise that the straps restrict the blood supply and I can't sit in it for more
than 20 minutes.


Vocabulary
boulder - a huge rock
yank - pull
futile - pointless, hopeless
acid - chemical with low pH; opp. of alkali
wrist - the joint that connects the hand to the rest of the arm
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 gonna have to cut your arm off."
I take my multitool 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 unmistakeable 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 multitool 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 evercome 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.
Vocabulary
blade - the sharp part of the knife used for cutting
fist - a closed hand
wound - cut in the skin
capillaries - the smallest blood vessels
harness - straps around the waist and thighs used by climbers to tie the rope to
trance - dreaming while you are awake
forearm - between the wrist and the elbow
tourniquet - device to stop an arm or leg bleeding
pliers - tool for pulling out nails or cutting wire
tub - huge bowl or barrel