Amazing Story of Aron Ralston

A triumph of spirit over body - Books - www.theage.com.au

Trapped climber Aron Ralston cut off his own arm to save his life. He tells Peter Fray that he sees his survival as a miracle and a burden.

Aron Ralston still goes back there, to the place in the Utah mountains where after six days trapped by a boulder, out of food and water and hours from death, he experienced the "epiphany" that saved his life.

He was there again yesterday, in part sharing his amazing survival with friends, in part reliving the moment when he realised that by breaking his own arm and then cutting off his pinned right hand and lower forearm, he would beat the odds and probably live. It was, he says, a euphoric moment.

"There was no hesitation, no 'should I or shouldn't I?' " he told The Age. "Break the bones? Hell, yeah! Then I pick up the knife and I'm going at it. It's just an hour and five minutes, maybe four, from that time and it was over. I was free.

"To me, the amputation is the most beautiful experience I'll ever have in my life because it comes from the contrast of being dead in my grave for six days and (then) having my life back. My sense of euphoria is never more intense than when I am actually in that spot. It brings me to tears to be there . . . the tears of joy."
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Ralston's story of self-amputation in May last year has become the stuff of legend and is now the subject of an intense self-penned book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

For once, the cliche seems appropriate. The book may not be for the squeamish, but it vividly charts the boundaries of human endurance, pain and spirituality.

"Out of curiosity, I poke my thumb with the knife blade twice," Ralston, now 28, writes about day six of his ordeal. "On the second prodding, the blade punctures the epidermis as if it is dipping into a stick of room-temperature butter and releases a telltale hissing. Escaping gases are not good; the rot had advanced more quickly than I had guessed."

He tried but failed to yank his forearm out from the rock, "never wanting more than I do now to simply rid myself of any connection to this decomposing appendage. I don't want it. It's not part of me. It's garbage."

Ralston's ordeal started during a five-day holiday in Utah in late April last year. An experienced and dedicated climber who likes to walk and climb on his own, he chose to do some simple canyoning in the Canyonlands National Park in south-eastern Utah, but made a near-fatal mistake by not telling anyone of his plans.

"I thought it was a low-risk situation. This was about a one out of 10 compared to some of the things I do by myself."

On April 26, as he navigated his way up Blue John Canyon, Ralston came to a three-metre drop, one of five on his route, and for an experienced climber such as himself, a piece of cake.

Eschewing ropes, he decided to climb down using a boulder that seemed to be safely wedged. It was not and, in a blinding moment of panic and misfortune, Ralston brought the 400-kilogram rock down on himself, crushing his right hand against the canyon wall.

He was trapped, his hand and wrist caught in a rocky, sandstone shackle, with his feet on the ground. "Good Christ, my hand," he writes. "The flaring agony throws me into panic. I grimace and growl a sharp 'f---'. My mind commands my body, 'Get your hand out of there!' I yank my arm three times in a naive attempt to pull it out. But I'm stuck."

Over the next few days, Ralston tried frantically to free himself, by first hacking away at the boulder with his pen knife, then by trying to move the rock with a rigged-up pulley system and finally by cutting away at the skin on a hand that he knew was dying.

But the blade left just a few red lines on his forearm. He couldn't sleep in the freezing cold nights and he didn't pass out due to the pain. He is not sure why, but thinks that was all part of the "miracle" of his survival. By day four, he was becoming delusional and had run out of water. He drank his own urine.

But then came the epiphany, the way out that he claims was "given" to him by a voice in his head. The answer was to break his own arm. He saw at once that it was the right course.

"I had stabbed myself on the fourth day but still I knew I had the bones. That was what changed that instant at 10.30 on Thursday morning. Up to that point, I was going to be stuck by the bones. I didn't have a saw. I didn't have a way to get through the bones."

Ralston says he realised that by moving his body weight around against the boulder he could snap the ulna and radius bones one after the other. Then it was only a matter of stabbing through the skin and carefully cutting away the tendons and arteries. He applied a tourniquet to stem the blood loss.

"Why did I have to suffer this extra time?" he writes. "I must be the dumbest guy to ever have his hand trapped by a boulder. It took me six days to figure out how I could cut off my arm."

Ralston says he has an answer to his question. The voice was a form of divine intervention, timed to coincide with a full-scale rescue attempt that was being mounted.

Who or what was the voice?

"I don't know," he says. "Another Aron or God - I think it is some essence of a divine spirit which I think is also part of my spirit and it is not separate, but the same thing."

After about three hours of hiking, he found a family of Dutch tourists and was soon flown to hospital. His parents and friends had raised the alarm.

Aside from his love affair with the great outdoors, Ralston, a mechanical engineer by training, now spends his time sharing his story as a motivational and after-dinner speaker. He sees it as his duty, though he concedes it is also a way of making a living at the moment. He describes his survival as a miracle, a blessing and a burden.

People have written to him to say his story inspired them to change their lives as he had a year before the accident, when he left a well-paid job to dedicate his life to climbing and other outdoor pursuits.

"These people who credit the story with having saved them from depression and suicide, it's kind of a burden, too. It's a very heavy thing. It gives me a great sense of obligation then, to know my story has that kind of power.

"What kind of responsibility do I have on my shoulders then if I ever stop telling it, knowing there's somebody who has yet to hear it and this makes the difference in their life? It's not only been a blessing in my life, it's been a blessing to the world. It's been a blessing to other people. Things are different now. I live with a sense not just of a deeper appreciation of my life but also a deeper sense of purpose."

Ralston, an intense man, has several reminders of his ordeal. They include his new prosthetic arm, a smooth, near-bionic device that enables him to peel a tangerine, play piano (a long-standing passion) and, most importantly, still climb and compete in endurance events. Until recently, another keepsake was an old enemy: he kept the cremated remains of his hand, wrist and lower forearm in a white box.

It took 13 people to retrieve the hand from the boulder over four days using pulleys and jacks and timber framing. Ralston was told it looked like a black leather driving glove. He recently returned the ashes to the scene of the accident, but kept them nearby while writing the book.

His most poignant and disturbing memories from Utah are on tape. He had a camcorder with him and as the days went on he used it to record a series of messages to his friends and family. The last, taped on the morning of the sixth day, is his will and farewell message. Slurring and virtually incoherent, he asks his friends to scatter his ashes over some of his favourite climbs.

Ralston says his mother, Donna, had felt all right about reading his book, but hated watching the video. "When I watched with my mum, we were both crying the whole time and holding hands," he says. "It was really hard for her and she wished she hadn't seen it afterwards."

Ralston's rehabilitation took four months and five operations. He spent 17 days in hospital and six weeks on antibiotics to ward off the blood and bone infections he had caught while trapped. But as soon as he was off the serious drugs, he was back on the adventure trail. In December, he plans to climb South America's Mount Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Western hemisphere.

He sees climbing as a passionate obligation to himself. "I believe my purpose on this planet is to express my soul," he says. "To figure out what it is that's going to fulfil my soul's desires. In doing that I find happiness in my life."

Ralston's most-lasting memento is the ghost of his right hand. It tingles all the time. "It feels like my fist is balled up inside, loosely like it was holding something," he says.