by Aron Ralston
Pushing aside that bleak conclusion for a moment, I find some levity in my situation—it’s the first time in thirteen years that I have carried out a dissection, and I’m handling it much better this time around, even though it’s my own arm. I recall the sheep’s eyeball that stared back at me from the stainless-steel pan in ninth-grade physical science class. Cutting into the squishy orb was enough to intimidate me right out of the biology program in high school; thereafter, I stuck with chemistry and physics—anything to avoid animal parts in a nonculinary setting. That eyeball was indirectly responsible for my chosen path in engineering. It’s odd that I’ve come back to face such an old and rooted fear in this canyon.
Sweating from the adrenaline, I set my multi-tool on top of the chockstone and pick up my water bottle. It’s not time for my next sip, but I’ve earned this. As the first drops splash against my lip, I open my eyes and stare into the opaque blue bottom with detachment. I continue to tilt the bottle up and up, feeling a mix of deserved reward and recalcitrant spite—like I’m doing something naughty but I don’t care; I’m going to do it, and the fact that I shouldn’t makes me enjoy it even more.
Just do it—get it over with. It doesn’t matter.
Each continued tablespoon of water satisfies me like a whole mouthful, and instantly, I’m gulping at the dribbling flow. I close my eyes…Oh, God. After an all too brief three seconds, I swallow the last drops of my clean water supply, and it’s gone. My body wails for the water to keep coming, but there is no more. I gaze into the container poised over the bridge of my nose and shake the Nalgene, tearing free those last drops from the walls of the bottle.
Well, that’s it, there’s not a single drop left. I don’t linger on it. Screwing the lid back on the threaded lip, I realize I’ve passed a moment I’ve been anticipating for three days. Now it’s over. There’s one less thing I have to worry about. I decide to disengage the tourniquet—it’s making my whole arm ache, and since I won’t be going any further with the amputation, there’s no need to cause any excess agony. I unclip the carabiner holding the neoprene tubing and slowly unwind it, allowing my arm to regain its regular shape. At a snail’s pace, my circulation returns to my arm, and I keep watch on the wound. There is no increase in the blood flow at the gash, and no pulsing at all, so I figure I have avoided any arteries. Still, the bleeding is less than I would have expected. It almost seems like the tourniquet wasn’t doing anything. I make the connection that since the chockstone has pinched off the arteries and veins in my hand, it has reduced the blood flow in my arm. That would explain why my forearm is stone cold.
Pulling out the video camera, I hold it in my hand this time and begin taping the results of my surgery. My hat, webbing, and tourniquet supplies appear in the screen, on top of the chockstone.
“This next part may not be for all viewers at home. It’s a little after eight. At precisely eight o’clock I took my last sip of clean water…and…hide your eyes, Mom….”
Panning across the boulder, the camera comes to my arm and the gaping wound, smattered with bright red blood. My breathing becomes labored as I look at the puncture in my arm.
“I made an attempt—a short career in surgery, as it turned out—those knives are just not anywhere close to the task. I’ve got about an inch-wide gash in my arm that goes about a half inch deep. I cut down through the skin and the fatty tissue, and through some of the muscle. I think I cut a tendon, but I’m not sure. I tried, anyways. It really just didn’t go well. The tourniquet is relaxed at this point. Which actually is a little bothersome, considering I’m not bleeding that bad, barely at all. It’s so weird. You’d expect to definitely see more pulsing and bleeding, but oh well.
“I’m really fucked now. I’m out of water.”
I stop the tape, more depressed than ever. With an open wound, I’ve introduced a new contestant in the competition to see what will kill me first—dehydration, hypothermia, a flash flood, toxins from my crushed hand, or the infection that is likely breeding in my arm at this very moment.
Stabbing yourself with a contaminated knife—that was true genius, Aron.
Surmising that the bleeding at the gash site isn’t going to get any worse, I decide to cover the wound to keep the dirt, grit, and insects off it. Delicately pinching the bottom of my salmon-colored Phish tour T-shirt between my ring and pinky fingers and the palm of my left hand, I pierce the fabric with my knife, held between my thumb and forefinger. From the hole, I rip a strip of the cotton shirt from in front of my waist and wrap it three times around my forearm. There now. I have a bandage on the puncture site.
In a rush of noise, the raven’s wings swat at the air seventy feet over my head—once, and twice, as it attains cruising altitude, flying its morning search route. I glance at my watch. 8:31 A.M. The bird is fifteen minutes late this morning.
The canyon behind me begins to glow in a spectrum of pastel reds as the sun breaches the depths of the upper walls. Knowing that the sun will be more punctual than the raven, I get my video camera out of my rucksack for the third time this morning, anticipating my matinal sun salute. I videotape myself stretching my leg into the dagger of sunlight as it creeps closer to me. Before the sunshine veers up the north wall, I pan the camera from the view of the bright pink and carroty-orange undulations twenty yards downcanyon, to my calf absorbing the precious warmth of my only direct sunlight.
“It’s so pretty back there. For a…about twenty minutes, it’s actually possible for me to get a little direct sun on my leg if I try really hard.”
Like a prisoner with a pretty view beyond the bars of his cell window, I’m not sure whether the beauty of the canyon in the morning light inspires my tenacity or erodes my resolve. I yearn even more for freedom.
With the tape paused, my thoughts radiate out from the canyon to my friends all over the United States, readying for another workday. I wonder if any of them are thinking about me. I highly doubt the alert of my absence has gone any further than the upstairs office at the Ute Mountaineer, but at least somebody knows for sure that I am officially overdue. Theoretically, my manager is at least wondering what has happened to me, if not actively searching. I begin reminiscing about my friends, our favorite trips, and the places we have experienced together. For being just twenty-seven, I feel like I’ve had the adventures of someone twice my age, and the fortune to have had so many caring and fun people share their time with me on trips, at concerts, and in the outdoors. Thinking about my family and friends makes me smile. Memories bring me a tidal change of morale, absolving me of my preoccupation with the agony of my crushed wrist under this boulder. My mood shifts from one of speculation on the dim hopes of my rescue to a highlights reel of my life. This uplift is something I definitely want to record on the video. I wonder if my friends will get to watch it at my funeral, and that morose thought actually makes me happier—I can picture a church full of my friends in black, watching what I’m about to say on a big-screen television positioned near the altar. Getting ready, I adjust my hat, clear my throat, and try to swallow, which makes my lips smack at the dryness of my mouth.
“I was thinking about what I was talking about earlier, about my regrets about not focusing on the people enough. And I don’t know. I was thinking maybe that’s not totally true.
“I was thinking about some of my favorite trips that I’ve done with some of my favorite folks. Erik and Jon, going to Winter Park during those Jazz Fest trips, and everything from building the Dr Pepper can stacks on top of the refrigerator, to sticking noodles on the ceiling, to watching television late into the night and getting so jazzed up on sugar and caffeine, man, just having a fun time. Making those heinous—they were really good—peanut-butter sandwiches with honey. Jon, when we climbed Longs Peak, our first fourteener together, and that road trip we did last year out through the East Coast, so many states, just buzzing around. That was really fun, to be out there with you and Chrystie. Seeing you guys put your life together there, building it, that’s really
cool.
“Erik, I was remembering many times about Maui with Matt and Brent. That was such a fun week. So many good trips to see String Cheese shows, like down at the Wiltern Theatre, and that whole run when we did most of that Winter Carnival two years ago. When we went to Jazz Fest with KPat. Oh my gosh. I’ve never been so belligerently wasted at eight in the morning as when we were sitting on that boardwalk by the Mississippi River. Man, it was crazy—going back to sit in the hot tub, getting up a couple hours later to go do it all again, five days in a row. Amazing.”
I squint in a smile. Images come to me of that wild week in New Orleans when we saw twenty full-bore concerts in five days on an average of three hours of sleep—usually between nine in the morning and noon. By the end of it, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on a N’Awlins barroom floor in the middle of a beer-swilling crowd while one of the bands was in the throes of a second set. You’ll never find your limits until you’ve gone too far.
“I was thinking about a trip I did with Erik Zsemlye and Rana—I’m thinking about you—when we went up to Denver from Albuquerque and we opened the windows up in a storm and this whiteout blizzard came into the car and it was a whiteout in the vehicle as we were driving up toward Antonito. How beautiful Rana looked in her snow-ice-princess costume.
“Sonja, I was remembering the trip to Washington, D.C., and the high-point trips that we did that time. When we went down to Havasupai and I fell off a cliff into a cactus and I almost drowned in the Colorado River. I was thinking about another time with Jean-Marc and Chad in Phoenix, we went down to Mexico and Margaritavilled our butts off, sailed around the horn down at Rocky Point and back after loading up on Coronas and tequila on the beach. Jamie, when you and I went to Havasupai—that was beautiful. Down at the camp, it was so awesome, waking up together on New Year’s morning. Wow.”
Laughing a laugh of utter exhaustion, I recall the irony of the memories that involved a close brush with death. I’ve listed several times when I almost died as some of my favorite memories, times when I had fun via the intensity of the experience. Regardless of the psychological implications, I find a certain comedic relief for my current situation, wondering if I’ll feel the same way if I survive my entrapment in Blue John.
“It goes without saying, all the fantastic trips I’ve done with my family, but Dad, you and I have done some special ones to see Gettysburg, the history of Virginia and Pennsylvania, we did that one back in college. The first time we went to Canyonlands, Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, all these places that draw me back to the desert each time. Thanks for those. So many special times with great people in my life.”
I shake my head in amazement at my fortune. My memories overrun my ability to keep them sorted, connected, or ordered, and they begin tumbling out in chaotic ramblings.
“I was thinking, too, Erik, that first road trip to see music when we went to see the Grateful Dead over Fourth of July weekend in 1995.
“Gary Scott, our trip up Denali—that was the whole catalyst for me leaving my job. Thanks. Good luck on Everest, man. I know you’re up there high right now, probably Camp Three or so. Be safe, come back.
“I was thinking, too, about when Judson came up from Phoenix to climb Mount Rainier together in this blitzkrieg event. Taking a nap on the Disappointment Cleaver at twelve thousand five hundred feet, at three o’clock in the afternoon after summiting, when we started at two in the morning. ‘Five more minutes to Camp Muir!’ And it wasn’t.”
My smile grows even wider. Judson kept asking me how much farther the milestone camp was; I could see where we were going, but the moonlit night distorted my sense of distance, and I made earnest prediction after earnest prediction that we would be at the huts in fifteen more minutes, then five more minutes, until, after a dozen estimates of “five more minutes,” we finally tromped into camp just in time for sunrise. I was lucky Judson didn’t drop me in a crevasse for my lousy guessing.
“I was remembering, Chip, when you and I drove to Flagstaff and back for Keller Williams. That was another blitzkrieg. Oh, man, so many incredible times. Places I went with my friend Erik Kemnitz—to his house in Rochester one weekend in college. When I went out to California a couple times and met up with Soha and Craig and Buck, I think I even got a couple of you guys to your first Phish show.”
I’m feeling my tiredness delaying my efforts to speak coherently. Simply being awake seems to be fully taxing my brainpower. I need rest, but I can’t sleep. Bracing my left elbow against the southern canyon wall, I hold my head up with my hand and continue.
“Bryan Long, that one we did last year. Mountain biking and hiking and hot springs, then two Cheese shows, and another two Cheese shows. Zach, thanks for being my friend, we got to go hiking up on Sandia Peak with Erik that day. Ahhh, fun. I do appreciate all those times, so many good folks in my life. Rana, our trip to Telluride to see the Cheese. That was my best ‘last day’ ever, skiing in the full-blown pigtails, tie-dye shirt, pink fluorescent boa, our flags flying high that day.”
My smile is cracking my dry lips. I need some lip balm, but I’ll wait to get to it in a minute. Even the pain of my lips makes me feel thankful for the people I love.
“So thanks, everybody. Thanks for the good times. I do appreciate each and every one of you. Norm and Sandy, you guys are like my folks away from home. All my friends’ parents, too, for bringing up such wonderful people who have participated in my life, thank you. My friends in Aspen that I got to stay with over the last six months, beautiful, beautiful people, all of you, thank you. Bryan and Jenn Welker, Bryan Gonzales and Mike Check, thanks. Rachel, you’re a wonderful woman, thank you. I could say the same thing about a lot of people in my life. Thankfully, I’m getting to say it now. I love you all. Hugs.”
Wow. How good do I feel now? I wonder if this is a bit like my life flashing before my eyes, but on a slower time line. What makes the human brain respond to death with reflection? I always figured people saw images of their family as a way of saying goodbye, but considering what the memories have done for me—giving me a surge of positive energy, smiling, feeling happy—I ruminate over an ulterior purpose. Perhaps the whole life’s highlights reel thing is a survival instinct, something engrained in our subconscious, the brain’s final trick in the bag to continue its own existence. I imagine that once adrenaline has failed to engage a successful fight-or-flight impulse, the flash of memories acts as a secondary reflex, motivating us to keep fighting even when we don’t think there’s any fight left in us. In the face of an imminent demise, the medulla oblongata kicks into involuntary overdrive and says, “You think you’re done? How about all those people who care about you? How about all those people you care about?” and bam! you’ve got a little more spunk. Maybe that’s why suicide seems most tempting when you don’t have people telling you they love you, or when you don’t care if they do—there is no flash, the backup system fails. Maybe that’s why our brains store memories in the first place, to spur on a stubborn body when the endgame has begun. Well, whatever. I’ll take the happiness and uplift and leave the psychobabble. I feel good, that’s the important thing.
Come noon, I am biding my death, shackled to the canyon wall. With so much practice sitting in my harness, I have found the most comfortable angle for my knees, the best height for my daisy chain, and the perfect edge location for the rope coiled like a pad in front of my shins. I have taken care of my body to the best of my faculties with the available resources. Strangely, I have to pee again. I decide I will decant my current stash before I unzip, but pouring off the clearer top part of the liquid in my CamelBak will be quite the coordination challenge. I grip my empty Nalgene between my thighs and hold it steady while I bite the upper end of the blue CamelBak water bag in my teeth. I keep the reservoir tilted, one bottom corner lower than the other, and the sediment settles off to one side of the outlet. I pinch the bite valve with my fingers, slowly letting the liquid run out into the Nalgene as the salt silt stays behind. With only the
dregs left in my CamelBak, I close the Nalgene lid, set it on the chockstone, and dump out the leftovers from the blue reservoir into the sand behind my feet. Ewww. That shit stinks.
Good, that means you got rid of the worst of it.
I pee into the CamelBak and close the lid tight, setting it back onto the chockstone next to the Nalgene. This fluid is the darkest yet, pungent and warm. I’ll let it cool off and settle before I decant it again—the taste isn’t so ripe when it’s colder.
At about one-thirty Tuesday afternoon, I decide to pray once more. This time, I already have my answer as to what I should do. There’s only one thing left—wait for death or rescue, more likely the former. So instead of asking for guidance or direction, I ask for patience.
“God, it’s Aron again. I still need your help. It’s getting bad here. I’m out of water and food. I know I’m going to die soon, but I want to go naturally. I’ve decided that regardless of what I might go through, I don’t want to take my own life. It occurred to me that I could, but that’s not the way I want to go. As it is, I don’t figure I’ll live another day—it’s been three days already—I don’t figure I’ll see Wednesday noon. But please, God, grant me the steadfastness not to do anything against my being.”
I am going to see this through, whichever way it ends.
The third twenty-four-hour period of my entrapment is done. There is no water left to conserve, no potentially liberating trial left to complete. At three P.M., with nothing left to decide, my existence comes down to this: Take care of myself as best I can, physically and mentally. Physically, there is nothing I need to do until nightfall—the afternoon is the warmest time, so my only need is to adjust my body position to keep my circulation somewhat active.
