Who Recently Cut Off His Own Arm In Order To Save His Life?

In early May 2003, a remarkable story came over the Associated Press wire one evening. I yelled to my copy-desk co-workers, "Jeez, listen to this! A climber whose hand was stuck under a boulder cut his own arm off with a Leatherman tool the walked out seven miles and was rescued!"

On April 27, Aron Ralston, a 27-year-old climber and bicyclist from Aspen, Colorado, set off on a solo biking and climbing trip in an isolated area of Canyonlands National Monument in Utah.

Seven miles up a slot canyon, he let his weight down upon a chockstone the size of a bus tire jammed between three-foot-wide rock walls. As he dropped below it, it shifted, pinning his right hand against the canyon sides.

Ralston spent the next 24 hours, sometimes recording his predicament with a video camera, in a fruitless effort to hack at the surrounding rock with his Leatherman blade.
Then he began debating whether to cut off his arm to save his life. The hand and arm had gone entirely numb within six hours, and Ralston set up a tourniquet with his CamelBak's neoprene liner to stench the blood flow.

He made a few experimental cuts with the knife then lost his nerve. Another 24 hours passed before he made his resolve to proceed.

On Day 4, Ralston tried to cut through all of the soft tissue, with remarkably little pain or blood loss. But now he faced the task of breaking the radial and ulna bones of his forearm.

It took another 24 hours -- and the realization that the now-dead hand was putrefying in the desert heat -- before he was able to maneuver himself into a position where his body weight could snap the bones. Then he cut through the remaining soft tissue, and the arm was free.

Ralston rappeled 65 feet down the canyon wall then, bleeding profusely, walk out to find help, and into the media spotlight.

A year later, he was climbing, biking, and skiing with a prosthetic arm he designed himself.
He is now a motivational speaker, urging others not to make the same mistake he did: set off into the wilderness alone without telling anyone your destination.
Ralston's book on his ordeal is called "Between a Rock and a Hard Place."

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