Between a Rock and a Hard Place

by Aron Ralston

  Continuing on, I walk past several large cottonwoods and a thicket of tamarisks that testify to the substantial runoff that passes through this part of the canyon. In another hundred yards, the brush subsides. I tire of walking in my harness, with the belay device and daisy chain dangling in front of my thighs, so I tear the belt back through the safety ring and wiggle my legs out of their loops one at a time until the harness and the attached accoutrements drop behind me to lie in the sand like a pile of dead snakes. “That’ll be someone else’s little score,” I think, “some fine canyoneering booty, that.” Through the first meanders of the canyon, I find myself crossing the fifty-yard-wide floor to take advantage of the shade at the edges of the wash, but still, the effort of walking at even a moderate pace leaves me parched within a minute of sipping at my water. After a single mile, I’m as thoroughly dried up as I was at the top of the rappel, and I’ve already drunk a full liter, a third of my water supply.

  Not ten minutes after leaving the puddle, my bowels wake up for the first time since Saturday morning. I know what’s coming, and I know it’s coming quick. I rush over to an alcove along the edge of the wash where the occasional flood action has carved out a bench on the outside curve of the stream course, and hurry to undo the belt on my shorts. I strip down my three layers of shorts, biking shorts, and underwear just in time as I desecrate the slickrock. The water I’ve drunk has spilled over out of my stomach and flooded my bowels.

  Oh, dude! Jeezus! That’s horrendous, man!

  As if I weren’t in enough distress already, now I have to try and clean myself up. It’s pointless to try to wipe; I have nothing except my clothes, and I kind of need those. I pull up my underwear but take off the biking shorts and stuff them in the top of my backpack. I put my tan-and-blood-colored shorts back on and feel ten degrees cooler without the black padded shorts. No time to dwell; the episode is past.

  Hiking again, just before the canyon swerves to the right in a sweeping gooseneck bend, I take a left into a side canyon, thinking it to be the main drainage, but within forty steps, I feel an added strain on my debilitated system and realize that I’m actually walking upgrade and turn around.

  No stupid mistakes, Aron. Pay attention here. You knew this wasn’t Horseshoe Canyon. It’ll be obvious when you get there. Keep track with your map. You know how to do this.

  Suddenly, I feel a wetness spreading across my lower back. My CamelBak is leaking. I stop and drop to my knees, swinging my backpack around to the front. Sure enough, the bite valve is leaking water out of the bottom of the CamelBak. It’s not designed to hold back pressure at the bottom of the reservoir, and since I sliced away the tubing that would usually connect there, I have a problem. I open my empty Nalgene and squeeze the bite valve into its mouth, pouring half the remaining contents of the reservoir into the bottle. “Now what?” I wonder. If I leave the water in the CamelBak, it’ll leak out and be gone before I get to Horseshoe. I screw the lid back on the Nalgene, clip it on my backpack strap, and decide the best thing I can do now is drink the rest of the water in my CamelBak and go the rest of the way on what’s in the Nalgene. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than wasting the water.

  Now my new reality sets in. I have drunk five liters of water in under an hour and covered only a mile of the canyon. I have one liter of water left, six miles to go, it’s only going to get hotter, and I’m only going to get weaker. I have to figure out a better way to do this, or I’ll be dead before I get halfway to the Great Gallery. A memory comes to mind, a story I read in a running magazine maybe a few years ago, about the legendary Mexican Indian tribe of the Tarahumara. I remember being impressed not just that the tribesmen would run distances of fifty miles in a day, often in their bare feet, and through the heat of the desert, but that they would undertake these ultramarathons without any support—they wouldn’t even carry any food or water. Their trick was to take in a mouthful of water at the start, not swallowing it but rather carrying it in their mouth, allowing that single swallow to humidify the air going into their lungs. As long as they kept their pace below their sweating threshold, they would lose only the humidification that they exhaled. I decide it’s worth a shot and take two ounces of water in my mouth and hold it there while I walk myself closer, yard by yard, to my truck hidden somewhere up on the tablelands to the north.

  I immediately sense that the trick is working. Although I’m still thirsty, I’m breathing well and don’t feel a tenth as parched as I did when I was drinking the water outright. This might just help me conserve the rest of my water supply.

  At mile two of my march, at 1:09 P.M., I come to the confluence of Blue John and Horseshoe canyons and take a left toward the Great Gallery without missing a stride. However, in another five minutes, the sand in my left shoe builds up enough that I decide to stop and take it off. It’s been grating my sole raw, and I can’t stand it anymore. My left foot is much worse off than my right because I left the tatters of my left sock at the chockstone, stretched over the hammer rock’s top. Getting my shoe off and emptying it are the easy parts. I still cannot tie the laces, so I pull them tight and tuck the loose ends into the sides of my shoe next to my bare foot. Good enough. From here forward, I am as diligent with my steps as I can be to avoid the sand, both for ease of travel and to avoid getting more grit in my shoe.

  At mile two and a half, I come across a barbed-wire fence hanging across the wash, suspended by burly cables sunk into the rock on either side of the streambed. This must be the boundary for the national park, I figure, as I duck through a cutaway section in the middle of the fence where the boards are loose at the bottom. Right after I step through the fence line into the Horseshoe Canyon District of Canyonlands, my bowels start shouting, and my sphincter clenches. I charge over to a suitable spot in the shade of another shelf where I can lean and purge my intestines. Diarrhea won’t usurp blood loss as the primary threat to my life, but if it keeps up, it could dehydrate me even more. Round two over, I hike up my plaid boxers and shorts and march onward. The water trick continues to help me hike briskly while minimizing my intake. I swallow every five or ten minutes, but the good news is that I still have over twenty ounces left in my Nalgene.

  At mile four, I pass a three-hundred-foot-high wall on my left with dozens of broad-shouldered figures painted to enormous scale in all shades of tan and maroon. These are the pictographs of the Great Gallery, which I acknowledge now merely as a milestone on my march. Just down the canyon, amid a small coppice of reeds, cattails, and bulrushes, I step into soft waterlogged ground covered by a thick growth of grasses. A few paces farther through the marsh, I push aside some sedges and find a short stretch of open water. Hallelujah! It’s 1:55 P.M. when I stoop over a muddy rivulet six inches wide and two inches deep and try to refill my water containers. It’s a frustrating enterprise but worth every effort; I was down to just five ounces in my bottle, and now I can stock up again. I have to build a small mud dam so I can scoop my CamelBak reservoir through the muck. I kidnap a pair of tadpoles in my water bottle, but I figure why bother trying to get them out? I’ve probably consumed several hundred thousand invisible swimmers up to this point. What’s the difference of two more, just because I can see them?

  The blood from my stump is dripping quickly now, despite my tourniquet and wrappings, and several dozen red splotches appear in the sandy mud as I try to get more water into my CamelBak. The pain in my arm aches insistently around the tourniquet, and it takes on a mountainous presence of its own in my mind, repeatedly sending its single-minded message: “Your arm is severely injured; you need to make it better.” The pain tempts me to sit and regain strength, but I know I have to press on. At least I have more water now.

  Other footprints join together to form a gradually more distinct path through the sand dunes and tunnels of cottonwoods in this part of the canyon. Cairns appear beside the path. It makes sense that this part is more traveled, since it’s the approach to the Great Gallery. I can’t discern the age of any of the foo
tprints, only that there have been dozens since the last rain or flood. Still, following the lesson I learned during my entrapment, I decide not to yell out. If there are people in this canyon, I’ll find them, but it’s best not to elevate my hopes.

  At mile six, I make a left turn heading toward a colossal alcove that must be a hundred yards wide and at least that tall, overhanging a good hundred feet at its deepest point. Nearing the mammoth roof, the streambed turns to the right, and an unexpected sight shuts down my motor system as if the main breaker tripped in my head’s fuse box. There, seventy yards ahead of me, walking side by side by side are three hikers, one smaller than the other two. Other people! I can’t believe it. Up until this moment, I wasn’t at all certain I would see another person in the canyon. I swallow the water in my mouth and shake my head, trying to determine if they are heading toward me or not. For the briefest moment, I wonder if they are really there. They seem to be walking away.

  Quick, Aron, call to them. They’ll help you.

  I have to signal them before they get too far off. I try to shout, but my voice catches in my throat once, then twice, and I merely gargle the remains of my last mouthful of water. Finally, I manage a feeble “Helllp!” After a deep breath, I make another, stronger shout: “HELP!”

  The group stops and turns back to face me. I keep walking and shout again, “HELP! I NEED HELP!” All three of them start running toward me, and I feel as though I am about to cry. I’m not alone anymore. This thought is a major relief, and while I still have a good reserve of gumption left, I feel a boost of confidence: I’m going to make it. I know now that I won’t have to drive myself anywhere once we get to the trailhead. These people are going to help me.

  I’m going to make it.

  We close the distance, and I see what I presume is a family: a man and a woman in their late thirties, and a boy who I guess is their son. They’re all dressed in shorts, T-shirts, hats, and tall hiking boots. The woman has a fanny pack around her waist with two water bottles in the side holsters. The man has a midsize backpack on, nearly the same size as mine, but it looks light and is probably mostly empty.

  As we get close enough that I can talk to them, I begin telling them, “My name is Aron Ralston. I was trapped by a boulder on Saturday, and I’ve been without food and water for five days. I cut my arm off this morning to get free, and I’ve lost a lot of blood. I need medical attention.”

  I finish my announcement, and we come to a stop, face-to-face, a few feet away from each other. I’m coated in blood on my right side from my shirt collar to my shoe tip. I look at the boy—he can’t be more than ten years old—and fear that I’ve just scarred him for life.

  The man speaks, his single short sentence coming through to me as through a mental fog until something clicks in my mind. Realizing he has a Germanic accent, I decipher the six words:

  “They told us you were here.”

  It takes me a good five seconds to process the full meaning of his statement, and the next thing I know, I’m hiking at full speed down the canyon, barking at this innocent family to start hiking. “We have to get moving. We’ll talk while we walk. Can you understand me all right?”

  The dad nods but protests, “You should stop and rest.”

  I reiterate my command—“No, we need to keep hiking”—and then begin barraging them with questions: “Who are ‘they’? Who told you I was here? Do you have a phone of any sort that works down here?”

  The family trots to catch up to me as the dad replies, “There are police at the parking. They told us to keep an eye out for you. We told them we would.”

  “Do you have a phone?” I ask again. They do not. The dad has a GPS on a string around his neck. “Can you tell me how far is it to the trailhead?”

  “It is, ahh, three kilometers.”

  Oh, man, how can that be? I check my map, and it looks much closer than that, maybe a mile to where the trail leaves the canyon bottom and another mile of steep hiking. “Are you sure?”

  He shows me the GPS screen. He’s benchmarked the route, and the display indicates that we are now 2.91 kilometers from and 220 meters below the trailhead. The elevation will be the devastating part. I can feel the strain that comes with hiking up over the ten-foot-high sandbars where the trail cuts the corners off the meandering wash channel. I start to have doubts that I will make it to the trailhead after all. Maybe it is the knowledge that there are rescuers there, and that they might be able to come get me, but I begin to understand my body is failing. I’ve lost too much blood. Even minor obstacles cost me a great deal of energy and cause my heart rate to skyrocket.

  Thinking through the sequence of events that will most quickly lead to definitive medical care, I ask the hikers for their names so I can plan what I’m going to ask them to do.

  “I am Eric, and this is Monique and Andy,” the dad replies. “We are the Meijers, from Holland.” (That explains the accent as well as the excellent English.) I haven’t yet heard Monique or Andy speak, but I can safely assume their English is just as good as Eric’s.

  “OK, Eric, you guys look pretty fit. I need one of you to run ahead and get to the police at the trailhead.” I am fairly certain that the people there aren’t actually police, but that’s what he called them. “I need them to send down a litter and a team of people to help carry me out. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it out of the canyon. Will you do that?”

  “Monique can run—she is fast.”

  Still hiking along, I look to his wife, and she nods. “Do you understand what I need?” I ask.

  “Yes, a litter and a—”

  I interrupt her. “Wait. Did the police have radios and phones?” The two adults nod. “OK, I need you to ask them for a helicopter.” Why I didn’t think of this first, I don’t know—maybe because of my fatigue—but a helicopter will be much better than a litter team. All I’ll have to do is get up to a place where a helicopter can land, and then wait. I think I can manage that. I look at Monique. “Please, now, go fast.”

  [The following passage is from a letter from Eric Meijer, giving his account of our unplanned rendezvous.]

  On Thursday May 1st, our family [my wife, Monique, our son, Andy, and myself, Eric Meijer] planned a trip to the Horseshoe Canyon, a remote section of Canyonlands N.P. in Utah. At the start of the trailhead we talked to a ranger who told us about a car that was parked in the area already for several days and that the owner might be missing in the canyon. We joked that we would keep our eyes open and that we would try to find him.

  After a hike of 3.7 miles to the Great Gallery (Indian rock art) where we took some pictures, we returned and suddenly heard a noise behind us, and after that a voice that cried “Help, I need help!”

  Monique and I immediately realized that this had to be the missing person. We didn’t find him, he found us! A bit unstable but pretty quickly he walked nearer and we saw that the right-hand side of him was full of blood.

  His arm, or better what was left, hung in a self-made sling. We ran towards him and he spoke clearly: “Hello, my name is Aron. A boulder fell on me on Saturday. I have been stuck for five days without food or water. I cut off my hand four hours ago and I need medical attention. I need a helicopter.”

  We decided that my wife and our son would try to get out of the canyon ASAP to get help, whilst I remained with Aron to move with him in the same direction, giving him food and water and supporting him mentally at the same time. Aron asked me to carry his backpack and by continuous talking I tried to find out as much as possible about his further well-being. It was important to direct him ASAP out of the narrower part of Horseshoe Canyon towards the wider area near the climb out where a heli could possibly land.

  As Monique takes off at a jog, Andy follows her. I almost ask the boy to stay with us so Monique can go faster, but more immediately, I think of asking Eric if he has any food. He thinks and calls out to Monique, and she stops. “We have a couple Oreos left, but Monique has them,” Eric explains to me, a
nd shouts to her to get out the cookies as we catch up to her. She hands over the clear plastic sleeve that held fifteen cookies with an apology that she and Andy ate most of them already. She and the boy turn and run off again.

  There are only two Oreos left, but they are heaven-sent, and I dispose of them in a single chomp each, pausing after the first one to unscrew the lid on my water bottle and take a swig of tadpole water to wash it down. After I munch the second cookie, Eric hands me an unopened half-liter bottle of distilled spring water. It doesn’t taste as good as the Big Drop puddle water, but it’s a vast improvement over the sandy sludge currently in my Nalgene. I thank Eric for the water, and I ask him if he will carry my pack. He says certainly, and I shrug it off, lightening my burden by a few pounds.

  Eric talks with me and asks a few questions about what happened. I’m trying to walk with the water in my mouth still, but each time I reply to one of his questions, I swallow the water. When I finish talking, almost always keeping my answers short, I take another few ounces into my mouth and hold them there. After a half-dozen rounds of inquiries, I let Eric know that I need to stop talking and focus on hiking.

  About five minutes after Monique and Andy leave us the second time, Eric and I come across another hiker, in his early forties, headed in the opposite direction with an older woman who looks to be his mother. He asks if we need any assistance, and I reply with a question: “Do you have a cell phone or a satellite phone?” He does not have a phone of any kind, but he offers that he is medically trained. Relieved to have come across someone with more medical knowledge than my meager education by osmosis from search-and-rescue missions, I ask him to join us as we hike. He leaves the woman who continues hiking and introduces himself as Wayne, and I engage him in a back-and-forth to double-check that I’m doing everything I can at the moment to help myself. We walk together through endless stretches of tamarisks that whip at my arm and face, as I ask questions like “Is it OK that I eat?” (“If it doesn’t make you throw up, sure”) and “Should I worry about drinking too much water?” (“If it doesn’t make you throw up, you’ll be OK.”)