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Outside Magazine September 2004
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Excerpt: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Trapped (cont.)

Aron Ralston
"I will live": Ralston in Colorado National Monument, June 17, 2004 (Kurt Markus)
3 P.M.
Good Christ, my hand. The flaring agony throws me into a panic. I grimace and growl a sharp "Fuck!" I yank my arm three times in a naive attempt to pull it out from under the rock. But I'm stuck.

"Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit!" I shove against the boulder, heaving against it, pushing with my left hand, lifting with my knees pressed under the rock. I brace my thighs under the boulder and thrust upward, grunting, "Come on ... move!"

Nothing.

I'm sweating hard. With my left hand, I lift my right shirtsleeve and wipe my forehead. My chest heaves. I need a drink, but, sucking on my CamelBak hose, I find my water reservoir is empty.

I still have my full Nalgene bottle, but it takes me a few seconds to realize I won't be able to sling my pack off my right arm. Once I shrug my left arm free of the pack strap, I expand the right-side strap, tuck my head inside the loop, and pull the whole thing down my left side, to my feet. Extracting the water bottle, I unscrew the top and, before I realize what I'm doing, gulp three large mouthfuls, then halt to pant for breath. Then it hits me: In five seconds, I've just guzzled a third of my water supply.

"OK," I say out loud, "time to relax. The adrenaline's not going to get you out of here. Let's look this over, see what we got." I need to start thinking; to do that, I need to be calm. Poking my left hand into
It's not my hand I need to worry about. The average survival time in the desert without water is between two and three days. It's Saturday afternoon. I figure I've got until Monday night.
the small gap above the catch point, I touch my right thumb, which is already a sickly gray. It's cocked sideways and looks terribly unnatural. There is no feeling in my right hand at all.

An inner voice explodes at the prognosis: Shit! How did this happen? What the fuck? How the fuck did you get your hand trapped by a fucking boulder? Look at this! Your hand is crushed; it's dying, man, and there's nothing you can do about it. If you don't get blood flow back within a couple hours, it's gone.

"No!" I tell myself out loud. "Shut up, that's not helpful." It's not my hand I need to worry about. There is a bigger issue. The average survival time in the desert without water is between two and three days, sometimes as little as a day if you're exerting yourself in 100-degree heat. I figure I've got until Monday night.

I take an inventory of my pack. In the outside mesh pouch, I have my CD player, CDs, extra AA batteries, my mini-digital-video camcorder, a digital camera, a three-LED headlamp, and a knockoff of a Leatherman multitool. I've also got a climbing rope and harness and the small wad of rappelling equipment I'd brought to use at the Big Drop rappel. I pull the rope bag out and drop it on the ledge in front of my shins, padding the rock shelf so I can lean into it. My legs are quickly tiring of standing.

My next thought is escape. Eliminating ideas that are just too dumb (like cracking open my AA batteries on the boulder and hoping the acid eats into the chockstone but not my arm), I organize my options in order of preference: excavate the rock around my hand with my multitool knife; rig ropes and an anchor above myself to lift the boulder off my hand; or amputate my arm.

I decide to work on the first option—chipping the rock away. Drawing out my multitool, I unfold the longer of the two blades.

My first attempt to saw into the boulder barely scuffs the rock. I try again, pressing harder, but the back of the knife handle indents my forefinger much more readily than the cutting edge scores the rock. Changing my grip on the tool, I hold it like Norman Bates and stab at the rock. Nothing.

It seems like every time I go climbing on a sandstone formation, I break off a handhold, yet I can't put a dent in this boulder. The canyon walls seem to be of a much softer rock. I settle on a quick experiment and, holding my knife like a pen, I etch a g on the canyon's north wall. Slowly, I make a few more letters: e-o-l-o-g-i-c. Within five minutes, I scratch out three more words until I can read the phrase, an elegantly worded warning about falling rocks from Colorado's Thirteeners author Gerry Roach: GEOLOGIC TIME INCLUDES NOW.


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