No looking back

By DAVE PHILIPPS THE GAZETTE

SAN RAFAEL SWELL, Utah - Reaching over with his metal claw, Aron Ralston shifted down into second gear and his pickup rattled through a dirt wash leading to the Black Box.

Never mind that the Bureau of Land Management warns of the narrow stone passage’s nasty tendency to flash flood. Never mind that two hikers had drowned there in the last five years.

The Box was a rare blank corner on Ralston’s mental map of personal exploration, and he was going to fill it in.

“After I cut my arm off, I felt like I was given a second chance,” said the trim 28-yearold who amputated his right hand and forearm in 2003, six days after it was trapped by a fallen boulder. “I have a new sense of urgency. It’s almost a compulsion.

“I feel like if you’re sitting at home, you’re wasting time.”

Ralston pulled up in a cloud of rusty red dust at the end of the road.

On this sunny day in mid-May, he could see a trail leading down to the dark walls of the Black Box beyond. Behind him another pickup, carrying old hiking buddies Steve Patchet and Dan Hadlich, skidded to a stop.

The two trucks parked in an audience of red buttes rising 1,000 feet into the sky. Between their walls, glimpses of more mesas retreated back 100 miles to a hazy horizon. The rock and sand in the San Rafael Swell seemed to have no end.

When Ralston was reported missing in late April 2003, a local sheriff’s deputy had driven the long dirt road to this spot to look for Ralston’s pickup, figuring the canyon that had killed two other hikers might have claimed him, too.

But the dirt parking lot was empty.

Ralston’s truck sat several miles southeast at a place known as Hans Flat. There, a trail led eight miles to the narrow sandstone slot called Blue John Canyon where Ralston was trapped.

Ralston’s ordeal in the canyon is now well known. The mechanical engineer-turned-disciple of the outdoors, then 27, had set out for a 30-mile bike ride and day hike without letting anyone know where he was going. Halfway through, at a spot where the canyon was no wider than the seat of his pickup, an 800-pound chunk of sandstone dislodged and smashed his right hand against the canyon wall, trapping him.

“I couldn’t figure out what to do. I just couldn’t figure it out,” he said.

At first he screamed and lurched furiously, trying to pull himself free. Then he lunged at the boulder in an attempt to push it off his hand.

Nothing worked.

He caught his breath as the adrenaline soured into trembles in his veins. He was stuck.

He took stock of his options.

He had a few frozen burritos, about a liter of water and almost no chance of rescue. If he was going to get out of Blue John, he would have to do it himself.

First, he tried chipping away the stone with a cheap Leatherman knockoff tool he had in his daypack. It didn’t work. He tried to lift the boulder with a makeshift block and tackle he fashioned out of his climbing gear. That didn’t work, either. He went back to chipping with the knife, just to have something to do.

Ralston had a small video camera with him. From time to time he would take it out and film what he was doing in hopes that his family would find the footage if he didn’t get out.

“I don’t know what it is about me that’s brought me to this, but this is . . . what I’ve been after,” Ralston said, looking into the camera lens after 24 hours in the canyon. He has transcribed a number of messages in his new book “Between a Rock and a Hard Place,” released Tuesday. “I go out looking for adventure and risk so I can feel alive. But I go out by myself and I don’t tell someone where I’m going, that’s just dumb. If someone knew, if I’d have been with someone else, there would probably already be help on the way. Even if I’d just talked to the ranger or left a note on my truck. Dumb, dumb, dumb.”

He shut off the camera and went back to chipping.

The next day, Ralston decided to make a desperate move. He took the blade, dull from so much chipping, and tried to saw through his deadened arm. It wouldn’t even break the skin.

He went back to chipping. But each time he made a little progress, the boulder would just slip down and crush more of his hand.

Toward evening on day three, he turned the camera on again.

“God, I am really screwed. I’m going to shrivel up right here over the course of the next few days. If I had a way to end it, I probably would, tomorrow afternoon or so. It’s miserable. It’s cold . . . I’m doing what I can, but this sucks. It’s really bad. This is one of the worst ways to go. Knowing what’s going to happen, but it’s still being three or four days out.”

He turned off the camera again.

He tried to sleep, but couldn’t.

ELUDING DEATH

The next day, Ralston had an idea. A swift stab with the knife might break the skin.

He jabbed the blade at his wrist with a new sense of hope, and saw the metal point drive deep into his flesh.

He jabbed again, but this time the blade hit bone. Disappointment swept over him.

“I knew I could never get through that. I was stuck again,” he said.

That was it, he decided. The canyon’s shadowy depths would be his grave.

He was out of food. He was out of water. He was out of ideas. He had nothing to do but wait. Soon he would die.

After six days he had lost 40 pounds. He had resorted to drinking his own urine. He hadn’t slept. His brain drifted between reality and a delirium of friends and family. His pinned hand began to rot.

But he was alive.

“I wanted to die. I wanted a flash flood to take me,” Ralston said, looking back. “I felt really guilty because my sister was about to get married and I knew the shadow of my death would hang over the whole thing, but I just wanted it to end.”

It did. But not how he thought it would.

After 116 hours in the grip of the boulder, Ralston’s cloudy brain had an epiphany. If he used the rock as a fulcrum, he could snap his bones like sticks then stab through his flesh until he was free.

“The riddle had been solved. I didn’t even hesitate,” he said. “The hand was nothing to me. It wasn’t even a sacrifice. It was dead. It was gone. It was just a leash holding me there.”

He pried his arm up over the edge of the boulder. Nothing happened. He heaved against it with his whole body.

Suddenly, both flexed bones popped like muted cap guns.

He had done it.

He flew to the gory business of sawing through muscles and nerves, cutting tendons with the pliers, and slicing through the last shred of skin.

The surgery took more than an hour, but Ralston said he never thought about the pain. “After being so helpless for so long, I was just focused on freeing myself.”

NO SLOWING DOWN

Ralston now has seven prostheses to replace the wrist, palm, and fingers he left in the canyon.

He has a motorized hand with electrodes that connect to his arm muscles, a clamp for a guitar pick, a metal claw good for gripping a ski pole, a balland-socket device for mountain biking, and a self-designed ice ax-like tool for mountaineering.

Most people would stick close to home for a while after coming face-to-face with the natural world’s hard indifference and being forced to cut off a hand. The scratched and worn tip of Ralston’s ax attachment testifies that he still is going out to meet the wilderness head-on.

“There were times in that canyon when I hated the place. I hated that boulder. But I don’t hold any grudge against nature. I still get out a lot. I just carry a sharper knife,” he said as he packed his dry bag for the 12-mile trip through the Black Box.

Since his week in Blue John Canyon, Ralston has summitted five 14,000-foot mountains in the Collegiate Peaks in one marathon 48-hour grind, climbed two more fourteeners by himself in winter, mountain biked 60 miles of the Hardrock 100 in Silverton and run the 100-mile Leadville Trail 100.

Now he’s trying to figure out how he can climb this fall while also touring to promote his book. This winter, he is packing up to climb Aconcagua, at 22,835 feet, the highest peak in South America.

“The accident hasn’t really slowed me down,” he said.

Not with the big stuff, anyway. As he prepared to head into the Black Box, he rolled up the top of his dry bag and fumbled for a few minutes trying to fasten the top with his claw. “I had to relearn everything,” he said. “On my first trip, I couldn’t even get my camp stove working. It’s little things like that, or figuring out this bag that sometimes get me.”

Refusing help, he solved his bag problem and a minute later he and his friends were on their way down the trail.

DANGEROUS BEAUTY

The Black Box is as confined as a downtown alley.

The sheer walls formed over millions of years as the San Rafael River chiseled through a swell of sandstone slowly rising in the desert. Today, they rise 25 stories over the water, and stand so close together at one point that a man allegedly jumped his horse across the gap.

The only way through the chasm for hikers is to wade waist-deep down the river.

It can be dangerous. The cliffs escorting the current leave no escape if the water starts rising. But it is stunningly beautiful. The carved stone hung with ferns and wildflowers combines the timelessness of the Grand Canyon and elegance of a Venetian canal.

The mix of risk and beauty was just what Ralston was looking for.

Ralston, Patchet and Hadlich pulled on wet suits to ward off the water’s chill and blew up a collection of pool toys to float on through deep stretches.

Ralston splashed in and hooted as the cold water kissed his skin.

Patchet and Hadlich followed, splashing and laughing. So far it was a good day. They hoped this would be one of Ralston’s safer trips.

Both men are on the Sandia Search and Rescue Team in New Mexico. They met Ralston in the late 1990s when he lived in Albuquerque and also was on the team. The old friends joke that along with an ice ax and guitar pick, Ralston should have a large ring to attach to his prosthesis for helicopter rescue.

They call him “rescue bait” because he has a knack for getting into dicey situations.

Ralston laughs at their ribbing, but there is hard truth in what they say.

A month before Ralston got stuck in Blue John Canyon, Patchet and Hadlich watched a whole mountainside of snow cut loose, burying Ralston and two other friends in a massive avalanche near Leadville.

The group had been backcountry skiing. Patchet and Hadlich were in a hut; Ralston and two other friends looked down from the top of an alpine bowl. Ralston’s companions decided the slope was unsafe. Ralston skied it anyway.

The other two followed, and all three were buried when the snow roared down. Both men now refuse to speak to Ralston.

Then there are Ralston’s tales about at least three fourteeners where he almost met an early end because of carelessness, needless risk or just plain bad luck.

Even around his hometown, Aspen, his exuberant thirst for adventure has a reputation for being a little reckless.

“That’s just the way Aron is,” Patchet said, leaving an unspoken understanding hanging in the air. People who rescue mountaineers often share a belief with their patients: There is always risk. How you manage risk, or gamble with it, is the challenge.

Ralston shrugs off his detractors.

“There’s risk everywhere. I choose the risks that bring me the greatest amount of happiness. I like to attack my limits. That’s where I really find what I’m made of. I’m not telling other people they have to live like that, but I don’t want them to say that I can’t,” Ralston said.

In one of the most jarring moments in his book, Ralston is forced to face his dangerous tendencies. He is pinned under the boulder and, in a fit of despair and rage, he slaps the rock and yells that he hates it. Then, with tears in his eyes, he realizes the boulder isn’t at fault. He tells himself, “You created this accident. You wanted it to be like this. You have been heading for this situation for a long time. Look how far you came to find this spot. It’s not that you’re getting what you deserve — you’re getting what you wanted.”

LIVING LIFE HIS OWN WAY

Ralston always tells someone where he is going now. He rarely hikes alone. But the urge to find the limits that got him into Blue John in the first place still thrive in him.

He still climbs by himself.

He is trying to summit all 54 Colorado fourteeners alone in winter, a feat no one has accomplished. He has only six left. By the end of winter, he may have none.

He doesn’t mind that in the process he could lose another arm, or worse. He has weighed the risks and rewards, and chosen to go ahead.

“It may seem crazy, but we have to live, and this is how I do it,” he said.

In the Black Box, as Patchet and Hadlich slogged ahead, Ralston stopped from time to time and floated on his back, not wanting to miss the enchanting view of a light blue slash of sky between the dark walls.

The walk was long but safe.

The group emerged at dusk, tired, with gravel in their shoes, soggy as wharf rats, but happy.

That night Ralston had a treat for everybody.

During his first news conference after cutting his hand off, he had mentioned dreaming of margaritas while stuck in the canyon.

For weeks afterward, margarita supplies sent by well-wishers showed up at his house, including a battery-powered blender he now takes everywhere.

The little blender whirred ice and tequila on his tailgate, and he passed around fresh drinks. The men sipped margs under the stars, trading stories about other peaks and canyons — places they had been and places they wanted to be.

The next day, even though Ralston had to get home to put the finishing touches on his book, he went to explore another 14-mile stretch of the Black Box punctuated by log jams and rope rappels.

He didn’t find his way out until dusk — but it was worth it, he said.

Exhausted and elated, he started the five-hour drive back to Aspen.

Near the state line, he fell asleep with the cruise control set on 80 mph, and the truck bounced into the median ditch. He jolted awake in time to steer safely to a stop.

“No injuries, no damage to anyone or anything. Amazing,” he said later in an e-mail. “Not that I wanted to have it happen, but it became number 13 on my list of ‘Times I’ve Almost Died.’ ”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0223 or

dphilipps@gazette.com