Jem
05-15-2003, 09:45 PM
Thurs., May 1st was a very bad day for Aron Ralston. Five days earlier, while hiking in Utah's remote Canyonlands National Park, the inveterate mountain man accidentally dislodged a 450 kg boulder, crushing his right forearm and trapping him in the canyon. He'd exhausted his meager resources- a liter of water, two burritos and the sugary remains of a couplr of candy bars- days earlier. Worried that he'd die from dehydration before rescuers arrived, he weighed his options. All were unappealing. So the 27 year old from Colorado amputated his arm with a cheap pocketknife, the sort of device that also houses scissors, pliers, and a corkscrew. It was "what you'd get if you bought a $15 flashlight and got a free multiuse tool," Ralston told reporters last week.
It gets worse. The climber considered cutting off his limb two days before, but found the knife so dull, "I couldn't even cut the hair off my arm." After finally puncturing his skin on the fifth day, Ralston steeled himself for field surgery. "It occurred to me that I might be able to break my bones up at the wrist, where they were pinched between the rock and the canyon wall. Upon manoeuvring myself for about five minutes and really wrestling with it and applying torque in just the right direction, with my arm bent just the right way, I was able to first snap the radius and then in another few minutes snap the ulna (the thinner bone in the forearm) at the wrist, and from there I had the knife out and applied the tourniquet and went to task. It was a process that took about an hour."
Leaving his right hand behind, Ralston then rappelled down an 18-metre cliff, drank from a pool of water on the canyon floor, and walked almost 10 km before he was led to safety by a vacationing Dutch couple. They fed him oreo cookies.
Ralston, who works at a mountaineering store in Aspen, was flooded with hope once he decided to break his bones. He described it as a spiritual experience, fuelled by prayer.
"All the desires and joys and euphorias of a future life came rushing to me, and maybe this is how I handled the pain."
-MacLean's Magazine, May 19th 2003, p. 15
It gets worse. The climber considered cutting off his limb two days before, but found the knife so dull, "I couldn't even cut the hair off my arm." After finally puncturing his skin on the fifth day, Ralston steeled himself for field surgery. "It occurred to me that I might be able to break my bones up at the wrist, where they were pinched between the rock and the canyon wall. Upon manoeuvring myself for about five minutes and really wrestling with it and applying torque in just the right direction, with my arm bent just the right way, I was able to first snap the radius and then in another few minutes snap the ulna (the thinner bone in the forearm) at the wrist, and from there I had the knife out and applied the tourniquet and went to task. It was a process that took about an hour."
Leaving his right hand behind, Ralston then rappelled down an 18-metre cliff, drank from a pool of water on the canyon floor, and walked almost 10 km before he was led to safety by a vacationing Dutch couple. They fed him oreo cookies.
Ralston, who works at a mountaineering store in Aspen, was flooded with hope once he decided to break his bones. He described it as a spiritual experience, fuelled by prayer.
"All the desires and joys and euphorias of a future life came rushing to me, and maybe this is how I handled the pain."
-MacLean's Magazine, May 19th 2003, p. 15