April 27, 2003 - An exhausted and pale young man stares into a camcorder.
"It's 3:05 on Sunday.
This marks my 24-hour mark of being stuck in BlueJohn Canyon.
My name is Aron Ralston.
My parents are Donna and Larry Ralston, of Englewood, Colorado.
Whoever finds this, please make an attempt to get this to them.
Be sure of it.
I would appreciate it."
- Animation Note.
Include on bottom of screen “Actual quote by Aron Ralston taken from his self-made video”
With his left hand Ralston moves the camera and records his right arm.
At the wrist, it’s stuck in a narrow gap between a large boulder and the canyon wall.
Past the pinch point, the flesh of his right hand has turned a sickening bruised grayish
hue.
Ralston explains to the camera that his hand has been without circulation for 24 hours
and that he’s probably going to die here, all alone, trapped in a remote canyon.
But he didn’t die; this is the story of how Aron Ralston self amputated his arm to
save his life.
Saturday April 26, 2003 - 27 year old Aron Ralston, an avid outdoorsman who excelled
at skiing, hiking and mountain climbing was supposed to go on a mountaineering trip with
friends, but the plans fell through.
He decided to take the trip by himself, and he packed some supplies and his mountain bike
in the back of his truck and drove nearly five hours to the wilds of southeastern Wayne
County, Utah.
Two and a half hours away from the nearest tiny town of Moab, Ralston parked his car
at the trailhead to Horseshoe Canyon in Canyonlands National Park.
Horseshoe Canyon is stunning.
It’s full of vast rock formations, sandstone monoliths and deep ravines.
It’s remote, blue sky, big country, where you can hike all day and never see another
see another soul.
It was a lovely late spring morning.
Ralston's plan was to do a 30 mile (48.28 km) loop of biking and canyoneering through
Horseshoe and BlueJohn canyons.
He was dressed in biker shorts with regular shorts on top and a t-shirt.
He carried a 25 pound (11.33 kg) pack, filled mainly with climbing gear.
He also had a small first aid kit, a cheap knockoff multi purpose tool, two burritos
and a gallon of water split between a hydration pack and a water bottle.
Ralston spent the morning mountain biking cross-country.
Around midday, at the end of his 15 mile (24.14 km) ride, he locked his bike to a tree at
the top of BlueJohn Canyon planning to later drive his truck up to retrieve it.
Ralston ran into 2 young female hikers and hiked with them a bit before splitting off
to take on the tougher part of the canyon.
Ralston used his rock climbing equipment to navigate the intricate, narrow passages of
BlueJohn Canyon.
After about an hour or so, he came across three large boulders wedged in a 3-foot wide
slot canyon that he had to climb over.
The second boulder shifted as he tried to scramble over it, painfully crushing his left
hand and then pinning his right wrist against the wall.
Ralston was stuck.
He yanked at his right arm, to try to pull it free.
His hand had almost instantly gone numb, but yanking was incredibly painful and the boulder--later
estimated to be 800 pounds (362.8 kg) didn’t budge.
Ralston maneuvered himself as best he could into a more comfortable position.
He braced his legs and thrust, trying to push up the boulder up with his feet.
That didn’t work either.
Ralston’s hand had lost feeling, he was experiencing compartment syndrome.
This is when acute pressure is on or builds within muscle to dangerous levels.
Blood flow is decreased, which prevents nourishment and oxygen from reaching nerve and muscle
cells.
The compartmentalized tissue rapidly deteriorates and begins to die.
Ralston stopped for a break and awkwardly contorted himself to reach the water bottle
in his pack.
He chugged quite a bit of water before logical thought kicked in.
He was stuck, he needed to ration his water supply.
He knew the average survival time in the desert without water is between two and three days,
sometimes less if the person is exerting themselves in 100-degree heat.
He estimated that he had until Monday night.
Ralston forced himself to relax to stop the adrenaline coursing through his body.
He then took an inventory of his supplies.
In addition the food and water he had not already eaten, he had a personal CD player
with CDs, extra AA batteries, a mini-digital-video camcorder, a digital camera, a three-LED headlamp,
climbing gear and the multitool.
His legs were tired of standing, so Ralston used his rope bag to pad the ledge in front
of him so he could lean against it.
He tried to chip away at the rock with the 3 inch blade on his multitool, but made no
progress, the rock was hard and the blade dull.
Ralston spent the next couple of hours coming up with and discarding ideas for freeing himself.
Early on he thought about cutting his arm off, but quickly shied away from that notion.
As day turned into night, it grew chilly, the temperature dropped to a breezy 30 degrees.
Periodically Ralston turned on his headlamp and continued to try to chip away at the rock
to stay warm.
He grew exhausted, but when his knees buckled, the weight of his body tugged on his trapped
arm which sent pain shooting through his system.
Finally Ralston constructed a seat.
He maneuvered himself into his climbing harness and after many tries, managed to throw a carabiner
bundle into an overhead crack in the rock and wedge it tight so it could support his
weight.
For the first time in several hours, Ralston was able to sit.
However, after about 15 minutes the harness restricted blood flow to his legs.
So he began sitting and standing in 20-minute intervals, to rest his legs, but not damage
them.
Over the next 2 days Ralston continued to chip at the rock and also tried to construct
a pulley system to move the boulder off his hand.
It was to no avail.
He began urinating into his empty hydration pack, saving his pee.
Ralston experienced a host of emotions.
He reminisced about happy times with family and friends.
He brooded and struggled with remorse and depression over times that had gone poorly.
Though not particularly religious, he prayed and spoke aloud to God, asking for help and
a way out.
A few times he thought he heard voices and yelled for help, but only received the mocking
sound of his own voice echoing from rock formations in reply.
On Tuesday when Ralston ran out of water, he began drinking his pee.
As time passed, Ralston experimented with cutting his trapped right arm.
He stabbed down to the bone, but realized that there was no way his blunt knife would
be able to cut through it.
Ralston despaired, but eventually came to a kind of peace and acceptance of the fact
that he was going to die alone in the canyon.
Ralston made videos with his camcorder, saying goodbye to friends and family.
He also gave his last will and testament.
He scratched his name, birth month and year into the rock as an epitaph.
He also scratched APR 03.
On Wednesday night, having been stuck for 6 days, Ralston faded in and out of trances;
hallucinating.
He was delirious, dehydrated and cold.
Near dawn, he suddenly had a premonition of his future.
He was playing with a blond-haired 3 year old boy in a red polo shirt.
Ralston scooped the toddler up with his left arm, using his right stump to balance him
and swing the child up on his shoulders while they both laugh.
This vision spurred Ralston on, before then he thought that he would perish by himself
in the canyon before help arrived, now he believed that he would live.
By now, Ralston’s eyes hurt every time he blinked, there was 5 days of grit built up
on his contacts.
His gums and tongue had grown raw from sipping his acidic urine.
He poked the thumb on his right hand twice.
The second time he easily slipped the blade deep, which punctured the epidermis.
Due to the gases from the advanced decomposition, his arm hissed like a balloon letting out
air.
He smelled a fainting rotting stench.
Suddenly angry, Ralston went into a rage, yanking his arm, struggling against the boulder.
He discovered that his decomposing limb was pliable and had the epiphany that he could
bend it against the boulder until his bones broke.
Ralston violently bent his arm back and forth, using his body weight to exert pressure on
his arm.
Finally, the torque snapped his radius and ulna bones.
He then used the dull blade of his multipurpose tool to saw through the soft skin and tissue
of his arm, carefully preserving the arteries.
Ralston paused in cutting to apply a makeshift tourniquet made from the rubber tubing from
his hydration pack, using his biking shorts for padding.
He then used the multitool’s pliers to sever his tendons, before continuing to cut his
flesh.
Cutting through the main bundle of nerves was especially painful.
Then Ralston cut through the last piece of skin and was free.
Later Ralston said the amputation and bandaging took about an hour.
Ralston described the moment when he walked out of the slot canyon as being reborn, "because
I’d already accepted I was going to die".
Meanwhile, worried friends had filed a missing persons report on Tuesday night after Ralston
had failed to show up for work for 2 days.
The police traced Ralston’s credit card; it had been last used to purchase groceries
in Moab.
Family and friends were convinced that Ralston had gone hiking near there.
Authorities started checking the southeast corner of the county and luckily came across
Ralston’s truck at the trailhead of Horseshoe Canyon.
Search and rescue started doing flyovers in a rescue helicopter.
After the amputation, a bleeding Ralston crawled and climbed his way through the rest of BlueJohn
canyon.
With his teeth and left hand he slowly, painfully rigged his climbing ropes.
He then rappelled one handed some 60 feet (18.28 m) down a sheer cliff face.
It was late afternoon when Ralston finally made it to the canyon floor.
In bad physical shape, covered in blood, Ralston staggered through the desert.
He managed to hike nearly 7 miles (11.26 km) before running into the Meijers, a family
of Dutch tourists.
They gave him some water and hailed a helicopter from the Utah Department of Public Safety
flying overhead.
Ralston was rescued about 4 hours after amputating his lower right arm.
He was only about a mile from his truck when found.
Rescuers helped keep Ralston conscious for the 12 minute flight to the Allen Memorial
Hospital in Moab.
When they got to the hospital, he amazed them by walking into the emergency room on his
own.
He was stabilized before being flown to St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado
for surgery.
Ralston had lost around 40 pounds (18 kg), including 25% of his blood volume.
Rescuers said that the slot canyon Ranston was stuck in was so narrow, that he never
would have been spotted from the helicopter.
Worried that hikers would make pilgrimages to see Ralston’s arm and get into trouble
themselves, park authorities retrieved Ralston’s arm.
It’s said to have taken several men, a winch and a hydraulic jack to move the boulder so
that Ralston's severed arm could be freed.
Since his canyoneering accident, Ralston spent 6 months making a complete recovery.
He quickly learned to use a prosthetic and returned to the outdoor activities he loved
so much.
During the 1998-1999 winter season, Ralston had begun working towards a goal of being
the first person to climb all 59 of Colorado's "fourteeners" — mountains with peaks over
14,000 feet (4,270 m) altitude solo and during winter.
He had climbed 45 of the fourteeners, prior to losing his right wrist and hand in the
spring of 2003.
However, the accident hardly slowed him down.
In 2005, Ralston after 7 winter seasons completed his mission.
In 2008, Ralston traveled to the North and South poles, and also climbed Mount Everest.
He continues to climb mountains and participate in a variety of outdoor pursuits.
Ralston has appeared on several news and TV talk shows recounting his ordeal.
He’s made some other TV appearances too, including participating in a reality wilderness
show, making a cameo on the Simpsons and having been a game show contestant and winning $125,000
for a nonprofit land conservation watchdog.
Ralston is also a motivational speaker and has given speeches discussing mental fortitude,
overcoming adversity and inspiration.
He’s also involved in wilderness advocacy.
Ralston documented his accident in autobiography which has become a nonfiction bestseller.
While people worldwide have been inspired by Ralston’s almost superhuman tale of survival,
those in the mountaineering community were less impressed.
The first rule of backcountry adventuring which is to tell someone where you’re going
or leave an itinerary of your plans.
In his book, Ralston freely admits he’s been sometimes reckless and stupid when it
comes to taking risks in the wild.
In addition to losing his arm, Ralston has been nearly mauled by a bear and was once
buried in an avalanche.
Aron Ralston is not the only person to have survived a self amputation.
It’s happened several times before.
Notably, in 1993, 38 year old William Jeracki was fishing a remote spot near St. Mary’s
Glacier in Colorado’s Arapaho National Forest when a boulder fell on and pinned his leg.
For 3 hours Jeracki yelled for help.
The weather turned ugly and without a jacket or supplies, Jeracki didn't believe he would
survive the night.
Fashioning a tourniquet out of his flannel shirt and using his bait knife, Jeracki cut
through his knee joint, using hemostats from his fishing gear to clamp the severed arteries.
He then crawled a half mile back to his truck and managed to drive half a mile to the nearest
town to find help.
The human will to live is strong.
People have risen to the challenge and done some difficult and amazing things to make
sure that they survived.
Do you think you could amputate a body part to survive?
Let us know in the comments!
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