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Hurricane Sunk

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The Category 4 hurricane bearing down on the Caribbean started as a tropical depression 414 miles out in the Atlantic. Meteorologists paid it little attention-even if it grew, projections showed it staying far from land. But hurricanes have a way of defying expectations, and by the time it blew into the Bahamas on October 1, 2015, it brought winds that would eventually reach 140 miles per hour, compelling the National Hurricane Center to issue this blunt warning to anybody in the vicinity: "Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion." By then, the squall had a name: Hurricane Joaquin. (This is what hurricane categories really mean.)

Among those making preparations to protect life and property were the crew members of a ship caught in Joaquin's path. Three days earlier, the freighter Minouche had left Miami with 12 sailors on board, mostly Haitians, heading for Port-de-Paix, Haiti. Its cargo included food, two generators, and 800 pairs of shoes destined for a Haitian mission called Waves of Mercy.

But as the 212-foot-long boat battled up to 30-foot waves, that cargo started to rock loose. The shifting weight caused the ship to list to its left, forcing the crew to add extra weight to the right. As they worked, a monster wave struck, knocking the cargo booms loose and swinging the giant cargo cranes to the left side of the ship, compounding the list. The adjustments, the countermeasure-nothing seemed to work, and Joaquin kept up its assault. The crew began tossing containers overboard in a desperate scramble to stabilize the vessel. That was when they lost engine power.

With the ship unable to navigate, the storm took over, turning the boat until it was broadside to the current. Drifting and powerless, the Minouche was nature's punching bag. Night was descending, and there was nothing left to do but enact the terrible routines that every sailor dreads. A crew member activated the emergency signal that provided would-be rescuers with the boat's location. The captain, Renelo Gelera, authorized a distress call on the Inmarsat satellite network and then ordered his men to prepare to abandon ship.

The coast guard team stationed on the island of Great Inagua in the Bahamas had been anticipating a fairly uneventful deployment-snorkeling, fishing, hanging out. But Joaquin changed all that. At about 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 1, the team received word of an emergency. The freighter Minouche was going down. On the phone, Commander Scott Phy, calling from Florida, had a question: Could a chopper crew venture into the storm? Pilot Dave McCarthy, 36, didn't hesitate to muster his team: rescue swimmer Ben Cournia, 36; lieutenant and copilot Rick Post, 28; and flight mechanic Joshua Andrews, 32. (This is why it's actually safe to fly through a hurricane.)

Outside, the night was an inky black, and McCarthy and Post strapped on their night-vision goggles. Against the blowing force of the storm, Post maneuvered the chopper off the ground and pointed the aircraft south. The rotors thudded. The radios crackled. The fearsome wind pushed the Jayhawk forward, up, and to the side. (Here's how Hurricane Sandy wrecked one of the world's most iconic ships.)

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On the deck of the Minouche, the crew of 12 strapped on life vests. The men deployed the life raft, which inflated in the water to form a big black hexagon with an orange tent canopy. They jumped in and waited for help to arrive. Tiny lights on their life preservers glowed in the dark.

After about 30 minutes in the sky, the Jayhawk reached the Minouche. Below was the spectral outline of the doomed freighter. All its lights were on. The helicopter zipped by in a sweeping circle, searching for the raft; when the Jayhawk came around again a few minutes later, the decks were already underwater, glowing a dull amber. The copter made another orbit. This time the ship was gone; only light was visible beneath the waves. The speed of the submersion shocked the chopper's crew.

The raft bobbed in the waves a mile or so from the ship. The wind was buffeting the Jayhawk, and the rain and dark were messing with Post's equilibrium. Instead of looking out the windshield to get his bearings, he had to rely on the hover bars on the instrument panel that showed the craft's relationship to a fixed point.

Cournia strapped on his swim helmet, buckled his vest, donned his mask and fins, stepped to the door, and looked down at the maelstrom 30 feet below. A blast of wind rushed in. The more I stand around, Cournia thought, the more nervous I'll get. So let's start moving. He flashed Andrews a thumbs-up.

"Swimmer's ready," Andrews shouted into the radio, knowing he needed to be the pilot's eyes. After a few final checks, he got the OK. "Swimmer's on the way down," he announced as he lowered Cournia on a cable. "Swimmer's in the water. Swimmer's away. Clear to move."

To Cournia, the water felt reassuringly warm, but the ferocity of the waves caught him off guard. He was amazed at how fast the raft was moving. Catching up and grabbing hold, he peered inside. Twelve faces stared back, the whites of their eyes visible in the dull glow of their lights. Cournia explained to the sailors that he was going to get them all into that helicopter whooshing above, one at a time. "Any questions?" A crew member asked about their ship.

"It's gone," Cournia told them. Shock spread across their faces. It was as if, floating alone out there in the storm, they were only now grasping the gravity of their situation.

After seizing the most frightened-looking man in the raft, Cournia pulled him into the water and signaled to Andrews to lower the steel basket, a kind of walled metal seat. He loaded in the survivor, then turned to swim back to the raft-only it wasn't there. Wind and current had pulled it a football field away. It took Cournia a good five minutes of hard swimming to catch up. By the time the first sailor was pulled into the helicopter, Cournia had grabbed another sailor and waved for the basket. After sending it up, he noticed the raft had again drifted.

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Watching from the Jayhawk, Andrews wasn't sure Cournia could last if he was constantly chasing his target. He and McCarthy decided to "hover taxi" Cournia, dangling him from the cable above the waves until they reached the raft. This worked for a few rescues, but then Cournia hit a snag. He pointed at one scared survivor and pulled him from the raft. Terrified, the man screamed and jumped into the water on top of Cournia. In a panicked clench, the sailor wrapped his legs around Cournia and pushed down on his rescuer's shoulders, which threatened to drown them both. The elite swimmer's training kicked in. Suck, tuck, and duck. He sucked in a full breath, then tucked his chin down to protect himself from being inadvertently choked. He wiggled one arm free from the man's crazed embrace and tapped him gently to let him know everything was OK. But the sailor freaked out more. With his free hand, Cournia jammed his thumb into a pressure point under the sailor's jawbone; he also managed to ram the thumb on his trapped arm into a pressure point above the man's left elbow. The sailor froze. Cournia quickly grabbed him in a cross-chest carry and swam to the basket.

The next few rescues went smoothly, but only 8 of 12 survivors were in the cabin when McCarthy, watching the fuel gauge, signaled that they had to return to base. Andrews hoisted Cournia up to the Jayhawk, and the exhausted swimmer yanked off his mask. "There are still people there!" he shouted.

McCarthy was firm: "They'll be OK. They're on the raft."

The chopper took the initial rescues to the base, refueled, and flew back to the raft about an hour later. It was around 3 a.m., seven hours after the crew had received the initial Mayday call. Cournia dropped into the waves again and quickly recovered one of the four remaining sailors from the raft. But during the hoist, a wave caught the basket-with the man inside-just as a gust of wind dropped the Jayhawk. The wave dragged the basket away from the chopper, as if it were a hooked fish pulling line from a reel. Andrews desperately played the cable out while furiously directing the pilot. The basket, yanked from the helicopter, had pulled through the wave and come swinging back like a pendulum. After several harrowing minutes-for the crew and for the man yo-yoing in midair-it reached the Jayhawk. The sailor inside, frozen in shock from the ordeal, rolled out onto the cabin floor.

Afterward, as Andrews guided the cable ferrying the swimmer toward the raft, he felt a snag on his glove. A few strands on the cable had broken. There was no way around it-they would have to swap helicopters.

By around 4:45 a.m., when the Coasties returned to the Minouche's crew again in a new chopper, the storm had grown even worse. Lightning, combined with the static electricity generated by the helicopter itself, had the potential to charge the metal all around them. Cournia was recovering the first of the three remaining survivors. As the cable lifted the basket out of the water, he reached up to steady the seat, and bam! An electric shock convulsed him. After the charge passed through, he pried his hands off the steel. There was nothing he could do, he thought, except be careful. After aiding the last two survivors, Cournia was lifted, and the Jayhawk returned to Great Inagua just as dawn began to stain the gray clouds orange.

The Minouche's Haitian survivors eventually returned home, and most have recently returned to sailing.

For the Jayhawk crew, one image is forever seared into their minds: that darkening glow as the Minouche went under. "It was one of the eeriest things I've seen in my life, that 212-foot vessel all lit up," says Post now. "It still gives me chills."

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A Hurricane Sunk Their Ship. This Rescue Swimmer Was Their Only Hope | Reader's Digest - Reader's Digest

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The Category 4 hurricane bearing down on the Caribbean started as a tropical depression 414 miles out in the Atlantic. Meteo­rologists paid it little attention-even if it grew, projections showed it staying far from land.

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Survival Tale

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It was approaching noon on December 21, 1943, in the Tanana River valley of Alaska, not far from the Arctic Circle, and the five men on the Iceberg Inez were preparing to crash. Minutes before, the crew of the B-24 bomber had been testing a modified system on the plane's four propellers when the plane seemed to stall, sending it diving into a roller-coaster plunge. G-forces slammed pilots Leon Crane and Harold Hoskin as they lurched at the controls. Wind screamed over the cockpit glass. The airspeed gauge was redlining. The flight instruments were blinking out. Then something that sounded like a pistol shot came from the tail, followed by cracking noises.

"Open bomb bays!" Crane shouted to the crew chief.

"Bail out!" Hoskin yelled to the other crew members.

The crash alarm bells jangled like a fire drill as Crane yanked off his mittens to secure his chute. And then, before he knew what was happening, he was in a free fall. He felt for the rip cord. The chute poured out. He swayed beneath it and watched the Iceberg Inez spin off before it slammed into a mountain slope and erupted in flames. Crane himself thudded into the powdery snow near the banks of a stream, two miles away from his plane, he guessed. The gas on board would keep the wreckage burning for a while, which would be good for a rescue mission. But the fire also meant the supplies on board-sleeping bags, signal flares, a gun, and ammunition-were lost, almost certainly along with any other crew members who might have survived the crash. (Here's how you can survive a plane crash.)

Still, Crane shouted out for Hoskin and the rest of the men. He listened for any hint of life. Nothing. He was alone.
The sky was already turning dark. Crane took a few stumbling steps and found that the snow covered a jumble of rocks that made walking nearly impossible. There was no chance to reach the crash site before nightfall, nor did he have any idea where he was. And a broken ankle would be a death sentence.

Fortunately, the 23-year-old pilot had a few provisions to keep him warm until help arrived. He had the silk parachute, which he could use as a sleeping bag. His flight suit was intact. He had on three pairs of wool socks under his heavy mukluks. He also had his flight helmet and a pack of matches, as well as a knife. But he didn't have his mittens, which he'd left on board in the rush to prep his chute. Without them, his unprotected fingers could become frostbitten within ten minutes.

He tucked his hands in his armpits and thought back to the last radio contact with the air base at Ladd Field in Fairbanks. That had been at least an hour before the plane had fallen, which meant the search area would be huge-a radius of about 200 miles from their last known position.

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It was minus-60 degrees Fahrenheit. Crane knew he needed to get a fire going or he might not last the night, so he gathered driftwood. His fingers were numb, but he managed to strike a match. The little flame wasn't enough to catch. He tried four matches, but they did nothing except singe his fingertips. This is how your body deals with freezing cold weather.

Then he remembered a letter from his father he kept in his parka. Crane fed it into the wood. The fifth match worked, and a fire rose up. He let the fire thaw his fingers before wrapping himself in the chute. He thought about what would happen if rescue never came. How long, he wondered, would it take to die?

In the morning, Crane ran through his odds of being saved. The short daylight allowed little time for search planes. And in this climate, the hunt would be measured in days, not weeks, before it was called off. What if a plane never found him? There was water gurgling up through the ice on the stream, but he had no food. And his hands were already developing a pasty white look-the first signs of frostbite.

Crane was convinced that his best chance of survival was to leave the crash area and explore downstream. The water had to eventually drain into something, he reasoned, probably the Yukon River, and there was a chance of finding a trapper riding out the winter. But first he called out for his crewmates once again. When there was no response, he gathered up his parachute and his matches and set off. It took hours to cover one mile through the waist-deep drifts and ice-coated rocks.
As the sky darkened, Crane picked a patch of level ground by the stream to build a fire. But he had already burned his only kindling, his father's letter, so it took several matches to get flames going. At this rate, he would have only a two-week supply of matches.

By the fire's warmth, he inspected his hands. They were numb, and the color had drained from his fingertips. It was insanity to try to walk farther, he realized. It was wiser to stay in the vicinity of the crash site for a week, after which the air base would probably call off the search. Then he'd start walking again.

Hunger gripped Crane with an angry, clawing need. He had to find something to eat. Walking in deadly cold under these harsh conditions could demand about 6,000 calories a day. A few days of that and he'd simply collapse.

He saw a few red squirrels, one of the few animals that do not migrate or hibernate during the Alaskan winter. Crane broke off a branch, took out his knife, and began to whittle down a point until he had a spear. Then he took aim and threw. The spear flew through the air, wobbly and slow, missing its target by a foot. Next, Crane tried a sneak attack, jabbing at one of the spry animals. He missed, then missed again. Enraged, Crane grabbed rocks and hurled them at the squirrels. "Go to hell!" he yelled.

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Beaten, he spent the next three days wrapped in his parachute in a kind of hibernation, climbing out only to drink from the river and feed the fire.

Although Crane was alone in the wilderness, he'd not been forgotten. The first rescue flight went out of Ladd Field eight hours after the last radio contact with the Iceberg Inez. Within two days, more than 20 search missions were launched-all coming up empty. At the base, the crew's bunks and lockers remained untouched for a while. Eventually, though, their personal items were packed up and shipped to the next of kin.

With no food and fading hopes, Crane felt the need to do something. He decided the river was too much of an unknown, so on December 29, eight days after the crash of the Iceberg Inez, he began hiking overland in search of civilization. With each step, he had to plow aside snow. Numbness began to spread downward from his knees. Not a single stride landed easily. He stumbled several times, which forced him to pull his hands from the warmth and safety of his pockets to avoid toppling over. At midday, Crane stopped. In two hours, he had gone all of roughly 300 feet. I'm simply marching to my death, he thought. Crane turned around and followed his tracks back to his campsite on the river. The fire was nearly out, but some wood still glowed. He coaxed flames from the spruce and cloaked himself in the parachute for another night.

He left again the next morning, this time trying to walk atop the frozen river. Crane followed the pathway through white hills, telling himself, Around the next bend, there will be a cabin with a fire and a family who will feed me supper with steaming coffee. But bend after bend, it was just more river, more hills. And there was something else concerning him. It had started with a few moments of disjointed, meandering thoughts, and a few times over the past few days, he'd found himself in a daze. Crane felt himself slipping, his judgment fraying because of cold, hunger, fatigue, and loneliness. Make sure to read up on these life-saving survival skills you might need one day.

Dusk gave way to darkness, and as he blindly trundled on, a log cabin came into view, half covered with snow. He stumbled over rocks, running and yelling, not caring that his hands were exposed. He cleared away a drift and opened the door.
The place was about ten feet wide, with a dirt floor and a low ceiling. A wooden bunk stood in the corner. There was a table with burlap sacks on it, tied with twine. His frigid fingers couldn't loosen the knots, so he cut a bag with his knife. Sugar! There was a tin of cocoa, one of dried milk, and a box of raisins. Crane stuffed the raisins into his mouth. He lit a fire and filled a frying pan with snow, and soon he was holding a tin cup of hot cocoa in both hands. Then he fell asleep in the bunk.
When he awoke, he made more cocoa. Sated, he filled his pockets with raisins and set off downriver, certain that there must be a village nearby. The river bent to the west, and the valley narrowed. He hiked on, hour after hour. All he saw was more wilderness. Darkness fell, and a half-moon rose in the cloudless sky. The temperature had tumbled down to 40 below, he figured. It was decision time. His hands were too numb to light a match, and he knew he could not ride out the night without a fire. He made the painful choice. There was no village. He had to return to the cabin.

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He stumbled back along the river. Icicles hung from his nose. It hurt too much to brush them off. To stop was to perish. He just kept his legs moving. One step. One breath. Dawn came, and still there was no sign of the cabin. The landscape was not familiar-he had paid no attention when he'd headed out the previous morning. It was close to noon-after 30 hours of walking-before Crane saw the cabin again. He staggered through the door and made a fire. Then he wrapped himself inside the silk folds of his parachute and collapsed into the bunk.

Crane spent 48 hours in bed before hunger forced him to his feet. He stepped outside to explore a small shelter he'd noticed earlier. As luck would have it, it held food, clothes, a rifle, ammunition, and, most important, a pair of moose-hide mittens. Crane used the next three weeks to regain his strength. But if he was going to make it, he'd need to carry more supplies. So he took two old boards for runners, pulled a window frame from the cabin, and nailed a washtub to the frame to make a sled. He packed it with food and gear.

At dawn on February 12, 1944, 53 days since the crash, he said goodbye to the cabin that had saved his life. He looped a rope harness around his chest and hauled the sled over the riverbank and onto the ice.

The going was tough. The harness dug into his chest, and he managed only one mile in the first hour. For four days he hiked on, his world whittled down to the act of a single step, then the next step. At one point, as Crane leaned forward to push through a drift, the ice folded under his feet. He gulped a breath as the surface gave way. The sled halted his fall long enough for him to twist around, grab the rope, and haul himself back. He could feel the water leaking through the tops of his mukluks and soaking his body below his waist.

He had to act fast. Crane lumbered toward the bank with the sled in tow. He surged onto the rocky shore and, with trembling hands that could barely strike a match, made a fire. If you find yourself in an emergency situation, you'll want to know these six proven skills to survive.

Crane strung a rope between two trees and draped his tent over it, forming a crude shelter. He pulled off his flight suit, long underwear, mukluks, and socks. He was naked and losing body heat. He wrung out his clothes as best he could and laid them near the fire. Then he cowered naked and let the warmth of the fire slow his shivering.

The next day, his clothes dry, Crane was back on the move. A week had passed since he'd left the safety of the cabin. His legs just kept moving, making maybe four miles a day. He came upon another deserted cabin. Then more days of walking. March 7, March 8, March 9 ...

On March 10, at first light, Crane stumbled upon a trail and followed it. It led away from the river, then back toward the ice. There, on the other side of the river, was a cabin. Then came barking. The sound of a dog.

"Ho!" Crane yelled. "Anyone there?"

And for the first time in 81 days, someone answered.

A trapper took Crane in, gave him food and clothes, and took him by dogsled to Woodchopper, Alaska, where a mail plane flew him back to Ladd Field. He was the lone survivor of the crash of the Iceberg Inez.

Crane met a nurse at Ladd Field. After the war, they got married and had six children. They made their home in the Philadelphia area, where Crane had a career first as an aeronautical engineer and later as a home builder. Leon Crane, who died in 2002 at age 83, rarely spoke of his time in Alaska. Other people had faced far worse in the war, he'd explain. What he experienced was, by comparison, simply a breeze.

Buy your own copy of 81 Days Below Zero: The Incredible Survival Story of a World War II Pilot in Alaska's Frozen Wilderness by Brian Murphy

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What Happened When a Plane Crash Survivor Found Himself in the Alaska Woods | Reader's Digest - Reader's Digest

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It was approaching noon on December 21, 1943, in the Tanana River valley of Alaska, not far from the Arctic Circle, and the five men on the Iceberg Inez were preparing to crash. Minutes before, the crew of the B-24 bomber had been testing a modified system on the plane's four propellers when the plane seemed to stall, sending it diving into a roller-coaster plunge.

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Wilderness Survival Stories

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Real world accounts of outdoor survival stories. Knowing how others survived is part of your arsenal of backcountry survival knowledge.

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25 Survival Tales

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The 25 Most Incredible Survival Stories of All Time

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Our survival expert runs down the 25 most incredible survival stories.

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259 books based on 409 votes: Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival...

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May 03, 2003

By Stephanie Simon
and J. Michael Kennedy
Times Staff Writers

ASPEN, Colo. -- His right arm was pinned beneath an 800-pound boulder. His water bottle was empty. It did not seem likely that a rescue crew could ever spot him in the narrow slit of Blue John Canyon, in the wilds of southeast Utah.

So, after five days, Aron Ralston took out his pocketknife and amputated his arm below the elbow. Then he rigged anchors into the cliff, fixed a rope and rappelled 60 feet to the canyon floor. Bleeding heavily through a makeshift tourniquet, Ralston began to hike.

He had walked about five miles when a helicopter search team spotted him Thursday afternoon on a trail through Canyonlands National Park, drained and dehydrated -- but still pushing forward.

"That's true grit," park ranger Glenn Sherrill said.

On Friday, Ralston was recovering from surgery at a Colorado hospital. And his friends were predicting he would return to the mountain wilderness the first chance he gets.

"I expect him to be out there, doing everything he ever did," nature photographer John Fielder said.

Ralston, 27, is an audacious mountaineer who has climbed 59 of the highest peaks in Colorado. A story this spring in his hometown paper, the Aspen Times, described him climbing alone, in midwinter, in the dead of night, without cell phone, radio, beacon or rope. A mechanical engineer by training, an explorer in spirit, Ralston relishes pushing his body over ice-slick cliffs. He delights in standing alone at a 14,000-foot summit as lightning crashes around him, as gray wolves howl from distant ledges.

The adventure that ended with his self-amputation was supposed to have been a modest one: a bike ride up a canyon, then a hike down through the sculpted sandstone bluffs on a bright spring Saturday. The round trip would take perhaps eight hours. Ralston thought so little of it, he didn't bother to give his roommates a detailed itinerary, as was his practice on mountain climbs.

He completed the ride without incident and left his bike at the top, planning to drive up in his truck later to retrieve it. On the way down, he used rock-climbing equipment to navigate the narrow passages of Blue John Canyon -- which in places is just 3 feet wide. After an hour or two, he came to a giant boulder wedged in the canyon, according to Sherrill, the park ranger.

Ralston scrambled over the boulder and was lowering himself down when it shifted, pinning his arm. He managed to maneuver his feet so that he was standing upright. But he could not free himself.

Authorities said he used his climbing gear to rig a webbed sling so he could try to push the rock away with his feet. It was too heavy.

He stood there, trapped, for five days, during which temperatures dropped to 30 degrees.

On Tuesday, he ran out of water. On Thursday, he "realized that his survival required drastic action," according to a statement by the sheriff's office in Emery County, Utah. He used his pocketknife to free himself the only way he could, by cutting off part of his arm. Though such brutal surgery is hard to imagine, others in desperate straits have done it, managing to sever the muscles and tendons that attach limbs to joints with a modest jackknife.

It is unclear whether Ralston hacked through his bone or whether the bone had been crushed by the boulder.

Once he had completed the job, he used his first-aid kit to tie a tourniquet around his bicep. Then he rappelled down the cliff -- and started walking.

"His instinct for survival was great," Fielder said.

Hours later, Ralston met two hikers in Horseshoe Canyon. They gave him water and walked with him until they could flag down a helicopter from the Utah Department of Public Safety. Ralston's co-workers had alerted the mountain rescue crews just that morning that he had not shown up for work all week.

"He was obviously in major distress, having cut his own arm off, but he was still ambulatory," park ranger Jim Blazik said.

Ralston remained conscious through the brief helicopter ride to Allen Memorial Hospital in Moab, Utah, and walked into the emergency room on his own. He was later flown to St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction, Colo.

Rescuers returned to the canyon later to try to retrieve the amputated limb; they saw it, but couldn't budge the boulder.

"It's a phenomenal story, but Aron is a phenomenal person," said Tim Mutrie, the Aspen reporter who profiled Ralston.

Ralston underwent surgery Thursday night and is in serious condition in the intensive care unit. His "spirits are high and he anxiously looks forward to returning to his love of the outdoors," his mother, Donna Ralston, said in a statement Friday.

Though relieved that Ralston survived, Blazik chided him for hiking through such rugged, remote terrain alone and without leaving a detailed itinerary with friends. "As far as I'm concerned, that was a foolish act, very, very unwisely done," Blazik said, emphasizing that he was not speaking for the park service.

Ralston is accustomed to such criticism.

He has conquered all 59 of the Colorado peaks he counts as "Fourteeners," summits of at least 14,000 feet, with names such as Challenger Point and Mount Massive. (Some climbers, using a different ranking method, count only 54 Fourteeners.)

Five years ago he set out to make history by climbing those summits again -- this time alone, in wintertime.

Veteran climbers have watched with a blend of awe and alarm as he has methodically scrambled up one after another, risking frostbite and worse as he pushes to the top, then signs his name triumphantly in the summit log. Because the risk of avalanche is greatest when the sun is out, he often climbs after midnight.

Only three climbers have ever reached the summit of every Fourteener in Colorado. None has done it solo. Ralston has 14 more to go.

Mutrie, who considers Ralston a friend, says the climber finds joy in tackling monster peaks without the oxygen canisters, satellite-guided tracking systems and communication gear that many mountaineers routinely pack. Stripped down to the bare essentials, Ralston pits himself against nature. "For him, it clarifies the goal," Mutrie said.

An avalanche in February nearly buried Ralston alive as he skied backcountry with two friends; the experience sobered, but did not stop, him. Described by friends as soft-spoken and easygoing off the mountains, Ralston focused on his climbing goals with an intensity few could rival.

"He was trying to be one of the top mountaineers," said Joe Wheadon, who shares a rented house with Ralston in Aspen. "That was what he wanted to do."

Ralston graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with a double major in French and mechanical engineering and a minor in performance piano.

According to Mutrie's story, he worked for several years designing "clean rooms" for microchip production. When his employer, Intel, wouldn't give him three weeks off to climb Mt. McKinley, he quit.

"I could live out of my truck," he told Mutrie. "That's kind of an attractive lifestyle to me, actually."

Instead, Ralston moved to Aspen, took a job in a mountaineering store and packed his truck for the wilderness every chance he got.

Alone with the elements, testing his strength and his savvy, pushing himself past every limit he thought he had, he thrives.

"To challenge yourself, to survive in what can often be hostile conditions -- it's a very primal thing that people like Aron do," his friend Fielder said.

"It's all unnecessary," Ralston told Mutrie, "but at the same time it's entirely necessary for me. I wouldn't lead a happy life doing anything other than what I'm doing. This is my ultimate contribution, whether anybody likes it or not. It's my art."

* Aron Ralston was described as in good spirits, recovering after self-amputating arm pinned by a boulder in the Utah desert.
May 04, 2003
By J. Michael Kennedy
Times Staff Writer

ASPEN, Colo. -- Law enforcement officials gave a more detailed account Saturday of the rescue of the trapped mountaineer who severed his own arm to save his life, even as hospital officials in Grand Junction upgraded hiker Aron Ralston's condition from serious to fair. Ralston, 27, was described as being in good spirits.

An accomplished mountaineer, he was trapped in the Utah desert for five days after a boulder wedged in a narrow slot canyon shifted just enough to pin his right arm. After he ran out of water, he began rapidly losing strength and knew he couldn't last much longer. So Ralston used a pocketknife to cut off his arm below the elbow and then somehow managed to rig up a rope so he could rappel 60 feet to the canyon floor and hike to help.

Since the story came to light on Thursday, Ralston's ordeal has been the subject of national attention, complete with news conferences and live national television appearances for those involved in the rescue.

Ranger Stephen Swanke, who helped coordinate the search, said on Saturday that after officials had narrowed rescue efforts to the Blue John Canyon area of Utah's Canyonlands National Park, a helicopter was immediately dispatched. The helicopter apparently set out at about the same time Ralston had finished severing his arm and began rappelling down the sheer cliff.

Swanke said the canyon was so narrow, the helicopter pilot would never have spotted Ralston. After walking about five miles, Ralston came across a Dutch couple and their son and together they hailed a helicopter flying overhead. Swanke said that Ralston was picked up within a mile of his car.

"If we didn't find him he would have hopped into his car and driven to Green River and reported what had happened himself," Swanke said. The ranger quickly drove to Allen Memorial Hospital in Moab, arriving just in time to see Ralston walking out of the helicopter under his own power. He was also shocked to see Ralston was missing the lower part of his arm.

"When Aron hops out of the helicopter, he tells me very matter-of-factly that he has lost a lot of blood, that he is going to need assistance, that he has amputated his arm and that he has put a tourniquet on it," Swanke said. "He's telling me everything I need to know, as if he was trying to save me the trouble."

Swanke said Ralston's first request was that his mother, Donna, be notified. Then, as the medical staff stabilized him, the two men talked for almost an hour before the drugs given Ralston made him incoherent. Swanke knew that if he didn't get the story then, it might have been days before he could nail down the facts.

"I didn't want to wait that long to find out what's going on here," he said. Among other things, Ralston asked whether the rangers could recover his mountain bike and some climbing equipment left at the slot canyon.

"I've been doing search and rescue for 23 years and I've never seen anything like this," Swanke said. "He was just a phenomenal individual with an unbelievable will to live."

The search began over a much broader area because Ralston, as he often does, set out without telling anyone where he was going. Finally, worried friends filed a missing persons report on Tuesday night after he had failed to show up for work for two consecutive days.

Aspen Police Officer Adam Crider began looking into the case on Wednesday, sending out e-mails to surrounding jurisdictions as well as beginning a trace on Ralston's credit card charges to track his movements. The charges indicated that he had purchased gas in Glenwood Springs, Colo., about 40 miles northwest of Aspen, and that he had then purchased groceries in Moab.

At the same time, rangers in Utah's Canyonlands National Park were also mounting a search for Ralston's maroon Toyota pickup truck. On Thursday, one ranger said he remembered seeing the truck near Blue John Canyon in an area where many people leave their cars when they go hiking and camping. Searchers then narrowed their rescue efforts to that area.

On Saturday, all anyone in Aspen was talking about was Ralston's ordeal, though with outsiders many were protective of him, not wanting to say anything that might be taken in the wrong way.

"Just think about the incredible presence of mind he must have had to just stay in the moment when he could have given up," said Michael Yoder, the operations manager for the all-but-empty Innsbruck Inn. "Is this incredible or what? What kind of strength of character this guy must have."

But over at Bentley's Bar and Restaurant, local Tina Baar took a more practical point of view: "He should have someone with him," she said. "Things like cell phones don't work out there."

Ralston is an expert outdoorsman, comfortable in almost any terrain and weather condition -- the more extreme the better, many noted.

"He understood the risks and knew how to deal with them," said Brian Payne, one of Ralston's four roommates in Aspen.

Payne said Ralston showed him some pictures he took a couple of weeks ago while climbing Pyramid Peak near here. What the pictures showed was that the normal route was impassable because of unstable snow.

"So he told me he just went straight up," said Payne. "And I thought, no one does that."

Friday May 09, 2003
* Aron Ralston speaks publicly about cutting off his arm after a boulder pinned it.
By J. Michael Kennedy
Times Staff Writer

The mountaineer who amputated his right forearm when it became trapped under a boulder in a remote Utah canyon described Thursday how he had to snap the forearm bones before cutting into his flesh with a dull knife.

At a news conference in Grand Junction, Colo., 27-year-old Aron Ralston detailed the events leading up to the amputation and how he was then able to rappel down a steep cliff and walk to within two miles of his car before being spotted by a rescue helicopter. Until Thursday, a week after his rescue, Ralston had been shielded from the media by his parents while he regained his strength.

With his mother beside him and his injured arm in a sling, Ralston first thanked the millions of people who had kept him in their thoughts. He also said doctors told him that he would have lost the arm anyway because the 800-pound boulder had cut off the blood and caused severe soft-tissue damage.

"It occurred to me I could break my bones," said a composed Ralston, who underwent surgery Monday to facilitate the fitting of a prosthesis. "I was able to first snap the radius and then within another few minutes snap the ulna at the wrist and from there, I had the knife out and applied the tourniquet and went to task. It was a process that took about an hour."

Ralston, whose five-day ordeal thrust him into the national limelight, then added new details about what happened in the steep, winding canyon just outside Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah.

Leaving his truck in a parking lot, Ralston first rode his mountain bike about 15 miles cross-country, locking it to a tree at the head of the canyon. For the first leg of the climb, Ralston said he walked with two young women before taking on the tougher part of the canyon. He said he became trapped when he came upon three large boulders wedged in the 3-foot wide canyon that he had to climb over. The second boulder rolled as he tried to scramble over it, trapping his right hand against the wall.

From there, it was five days of frustration as he tried to find a way out of his dilemma. First, he said, he tried to chip away at the boulder and cliff wall with his cheap, multitool knife, which he described as "what you'd get if you bought a $15 flashlight and got a free multiuse tool." When that didn't work, he tried to rig up a way to lift the boulder using his climbing gear. But that, too, did not work. "At no point was I ever able to get that boulder to budge even microscopically," he said.

Ralston said that at first his adrenaline was flowing as he attempted to free his hand, then he realized he had to calm down and concentrate on solving the potentially deadly problem. As the days went by, he felt depression and remorse as well. He told reporters he regretted not leaving a note about where he was going, likening it to when an auto accident occurs the one time the driver isn't wearing a seat belt.

"This is something I almost always do, but I failed to do this time," he said.

On the third day, with his food and water gone and no hope for rescue in sight, Ralston made the drastic decision to cut off his arm. But when he tried to cut his arm, the pocketknife was so dull he couldn't break the skin.

On the fourth day he determined that the only recourse was to snap the bones, and on the fifth day he summoned the nerve to perform the operation, applying a tourniquet using his biking shorts for padding. He said the amputation and bandaging took about an hour. Ralston said he was simply being pragmatic.

"I felt pain and I coped with it," he said.

From there, he crawled through the canyon, then rigged his ropes and rappelled 60 feet to the base of the cliff, a technique that usually requires two hands. And then he began hiking out of the desert, heading for his car. A Dutch couple and their son found him about the time a rescue helicopter came into view.

When Ralston entered the room where the news conference was being held, he took pictures of the assembled gathering.

"These are for me," said Ralston, who quit his engineering job in Albuquerque last year and moved to Aspen, Colo., to devote his time to the outdoors.

He also said he was looking forward to leaving the hospital and returning to the outdoors.

And one other thing: "I'm looking forward to a giant margarita."

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May 03, 2003 By Stephanie Simon and J. Michael KennedyTimes Staff Writers ASPEN, Colo. -- His right arm was pinned beneath an 800-pound boulder. His water bottle was empty. It did not seem likely that a rescue crew could ever spot him in the narrow slit of Blue John Canyon, in the wilds of southeast Utah.

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Hopelessly pinned by a boulder that rolled onto his arm in a remote canyon, adventurer Aron Ralston says he first took a dull pocketknife to his forearm after three days, but couldn't cut the skin.

In his first meeting with reporters since he walked, bloody and dehydrated, out of a remote Utah canyon, Ralston described Thursday what it took for him to eventually do the unthinkable - cutting off his own arm to save his life.

"I'm not sure how I handled it," the mechanical engineer-turned-adventurer said, the stump of his right arm in a sling. "I felt pain and I coped with it. I moved on."

A day after his first attempt to cut his arm, Ralston went through the motions of applying a tourniquet, laying out bike shorts to use for padding. He worked out how to get through the bone with the "multi-tool"-type knife he carried.

"Basically, I got my surgical table ready," the 27-year-old said.

On the fifth day, he summoned up all his technique and nerve.

"I was able to first snap the radius and then within another few minutes snap the ulna at the wrist and from there, I had the knife out and applied the tourniquet and went to task. It was a process that took about an hour," he said.

Slim and pale with short reddish-brown hair, Ralston made frequent references to prayer and spirituality in his news conference. He said he felt a surge of energy on the third day, which happened to be the National Day of Prayer.

"I may never fully understand the spiritual aspects of what I experienced, but I will try," he said. "The source of the power I felt was the thoughts and prayers of many people, most of whom I will never know."

Ralston's ordeal began April 26, during what was supposed to be a day trip near Canyonlands National Park, Ralston, 27, became hopelessly pinned as he scrambled over three boulders wedged into a narrow canyon. One of the boulders, weighing an estimated 800 pounds, rolled as he climbed over it, trapping his right arm against a cliff face.

He tried chipping away with his knife at the boulder and the cliff, and tried to rig a way to lift the boulder off himself with climbing gear. He decided to sacrifice his arm to save his life after going through most of his three liters of water and his food: two burritos and some crumbs clinging to candy bar wrappers.

Even after his excruciating operation, what Ralston had to do to survive required skills beyond the abilities of most.

On May 1, he crawled through a narrow, winding canyon, rappelled down a 60-foot cliff and walked some six miles down the southeastern Utah canyon.

By the time he encountered hikers and then rescuers, Ralston was just two miles from the nearest road.

For reasons he wouldn't explain, Ralston withheld some details of his story. A publicist told reporters there would be no follow-up interviews soon and no interviews whatsoever with the doctors who treated him.

Ralston gave a partial answer to one frequently asked question: What kind of knife did he use?

He described it as a cheap imitation of the Leatherman brand multi-tool, a folding device that typically has knife blades, pliers, screwdrivers and other gadgets. He didn't give the brand, calling it "what you'd get if you bought a $15 flashlight and got a free multi-use tool."

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Hopelessly pinned by a boulder that rolled onto his arm in a remote canyon, adventurer Aron Ralston says he first took a dull pocketknife to his forearm after three days, but couldn't cut the skin.

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http://www.rd.com/true-stories/survival/plane-crash-survivors-alaskan-wilderness/

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The last thing Donald Evans remembered was shouting, "Pull up!" to the pilot seated beside him before the single-engine propeller plane slammed into a low mountain 37 miles west of McGrath, Alaska. One look now told him the pilot was dead. So was the woman sitting behind Donald, a popular schoolteacher named Julia Walker, who lived in Anvik, Alaska. Donald twisted in the six-seat Cessna 207 and looked behind him. The plane, hardly larger than a minivan, had snapped in half on the mountainside. He couldn't see or hear his two children, Mckenzie, eight, and Donnie, ten. His wife, Rosemarie, 32 and two months pregnant, was slumped motionless in her seat. Donald's mind filled with a single, horrifying thought: Everybody's gone.

TENDING TO THE WOUNDED
Still buckled in his seat, Donald, 32, tried to get his bearings. It was pouring rain. Some of his teeth were missing. Later he'd find out that the impact had broken his back, legs, feet, and jaw.

Then Donald heard Mckenzie crying somewhere outside the crumpled Cessna. She'd been sitting in the back row before the crash, and the impact had thrown her 20 feet from the plane. Although Donald didn't know it yet, his daughter's arm was broken and her intestines were severed, possibly by her seat belt.

Despite his injuries, Donald crawled out to Mckenzie, who lay soaking wet in the rain. Worried about hypothermia, Donald removed his daughter's wet clothing and wrapped her in a quilt the family had packed. Together father and daughter dragged themselves back to the plane, where Rosemarie was starting to regain consciousness.

Her back, feet, ankles, and right arm were broken. She was terrified that the baby she was carrying had been hurt. The only part of her body that she could move was her left arm, which she used to reach out the window, feeling behind her. Donnie was somewhere back there, alive; now they could hear him screaming.

After the crash, Donnie had rolled partially beneath the plane before the floorboards came to a rest on his legs and waist, trapping him. "There was no way I was going to be able to yank him up," Donald says. He heaved himself to the roof and crawled to Donnie, letting himself fall from the top of the Cessna to land beside his son.

Donald feared the boy might die if he wasn't stabilized and his head wasn't elevated. He noticed a splintered log nearby from a willow tree that had probably snapped in the crash. "I was able to take that and brace him," Donald says. Then he found the pruning tool he'd packed and used it to cut away the floorboards to stop them from crushing Donnie. "Give Daddy a couple more minutes," he reassured his son. "I'll cut you out of here."

Meanwhile, Rosemarie was slipping in and out of consciousness in the middle row, coughing up dark blood. "I can't breathe!" she yelled. Donald turned his attention to her.

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His adrenaline had ebbed, and now he was feeling the pain of his injuries. He forced himself to crawl back to the front of the plane and shift the pilot's body away from his wife.

AN ALASKAN ADVENTURE
Donald and Rosemarie had been headed to Anvik, the rural Yukon River village 350 miles northwest of Anchorage, to begin their first year of teaching. It was August 13, 2011.

They had grown up one county apart in upstate New York. They were 15 when they first met at a Poughkeepsie movie theater and started dating. At 17, Donald joined the U.S. Marine Corps.

During a 30-day leave, Donald told Rosemarie he wanted to visit someplace spectacular. He caught a flight to Fort Richardson, near Anchorage, Alaska, on a military plane. "Within the first four or five hours after landing, I knew this was it," Donald says. When he arrived back home, his truck had Alaska plates.

After four years in the Marines, Donald enlisted again, this time with the Army. The couple hoped to be stationed in Alaska, but Donald was sent to Iraq instead. When Donald's military service ended in 2007, he and Rosemarie settled in Wasilla, Alaska, and enrolled in Alaska Pacific University. After graduating with teaching degrees, they were hired to job-share a teaching position at the Blackwell School, a two-classroom elementary school in Anvik.

A village of fewer than 100 people, Anvik is where the southern route of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race meets the Yukon River. Snowmobiles outnumber pickup trucks. A head of lettuce sells for $5.50.

The family arrived in the village in June 2011, weeks before the start of school, eager to start their Alaska adventure. Their first flight in a small plane was smooth, and the weather was sunny. "As soon as we landed, a big black bear ran across the airstrip and stood up," Donald says.

They met Julia Walker, the only other teacher in the village. Donnie and Mckenzie made fast friends with the kids in town, and Donald spent the summer erecting the school's new playground set. At night, they played basketball in the school gymnasium.

A week before classes were scheduled to begin, the teachers flew to the district headquarters in McGrath for a series of meetings. On a hunch, Rosemarie bought a pregnancy test at the McGrath general store and confirmed her pregnancy. The prospect of another baby left her and Donald excited and nervous. Suddenly the decision to share a single teaching job, rather than moving to a district where they could each earn a full salary, made more sense. Donald would be able to teach during Rosemarie's maternity leave.

At the end of the week, the family packed groceries and school supplies in the little Cessna and waited for a break in the weather to fly back to Anvik. Pilot Ernie Chase, 66, had grown up in Anvik and flown the route countless times. Shortly after 7 p.m., he decided they had an opening.

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Plane Crash Survivors in the Alaskan Wilderness | Reader's Digest

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The last thing Donald Evans remembered was shouting, "Pull up!" to the pilot seated beside him before the single-engine propeller plane slammed into a low mountain 37 miles west of McGrath, Alaska. One look now told him the pilot was dead. So was the woman sitting behind Donald, a popular schoolteacher named Julia Walker, who lived in Anvik, Alaska.

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http://blog.theclymb.com/passions/history-2/five-of-the-greatest-wilderness-survival-stories-in-history/

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Human beings are capable of incredible things, especially when under the pressures to survive. Eating leeches? Building Ice Caves? Cutting off your own toes? Read on, my survival enthused friends.

Ricky MeGee
The last place on earth you would want to wake up alone is in the Australian Outback. Well, it became reality for one man after he claimed he was left for dead in the infamous desert with no clue of how he got there in the first place.

On January 24, 2006, Ricky Megee was cruising down an isolated road when he believes his car was high jacked by three aboriginal men who then drugged and dumped his body in the middle of the outback. He woke up unaware and confused to dingos' scratching at him in his shallow grave. And so began Megee's 70 day struggle to make it out alive.

Surviving on a diet of frogs, leeches, lizards, and cockroaches, Megee found a dam and was able to stay well hydrated until he was found by "jackaroos" or farm hands on April 6. By then, he was a walking skeleton and deeply tanned from the extreme desert sun, but he was alive. MeGee's car and the mysterious aboriginal men were never found.

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates
It was a beautiful day for climbing in 1985, as Joe Simpson and Simon Yates attempted to ascend the then unclimbed west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes.

But the challenging trip quickly took a bone-crunching turn.

Simpson broke his leg during the ascent, putting Yates in the position to get them both down to safety in the frigid temperatures. Matters continued to get worse as a storm hit making visibility difficult and the ascent even more dangerous. Badly frostbitten and unsure if Simpson was alive or dead, Yates found himself in a desperate situation and he cut the rope.

Well, turns out Simpson survived the 150 ft fall, and dug himself an ice cave to ride out the storm. Afterward, he battled three days without food and water, and though he was severely injured, managed to crawl back to base camp for help.

Steven Callahan
This man of the sea found himself in quite the predicament when a whale bumped his sailboat in the middle of the night during a lone expedition. Callahan's boat, Napoleon Solo, slowly sunk to the ocean bottom and Callahan found himself stranded in his inflatable raft with little water and a small number of provisions. Surviving the blaring sun, battling dehydration and constant shark encounters, Callahan found solace in the Dorado fish that hung around his raft constantly-his "doggies". Seven times he shot flares at passing ships only to be left in frustration.

After 76 days and floating 1800 miles, he was finally found by some fisherman who rescued him, but unfortunately caught all of his beloved "doggies."

Aron Ralston
We all know this story; does the movie 127 hours ring a bell?

An avid climber and outdoorsman, Ralston embarked on what he believed would be a delightful day trip of easy hiking and biking on the Blue John Canyon of southeast Utah. He was so unconcerned by the trip that he told no one where he was going. When he slipped in a narrow canyon slit and became stuck with an 800 lb boulder pinning his right arm-things got a tad bit unnerving.

After 5 days, his water bottle was bone dry and no food had touched his lips-his will to live was tested and he made the incredulous decision to amputate his own arm from the elbow down using a blunt pocketknife. After managing to make it out of the canyon, he flagged down some hikers and was airlifted to safety.

Jan Baalsrud
Ok folks - the grand finale. This is a pro-survival status.

Jan Baalsrud was a young instrument maker who was asked to help the anti-Nazi resistance in Norway during WWII. During his trip on board a ship in the icy Norwegian waters, German soldiers showered his boat with bullets, killing everyone on board except him. He managed to dive into the water, with only one boot and sock, minus his big toe that had been shot off.

Pursued by at least 50 Nazis, he was able to swim to the Norwegian coast where two girls on the beach rescued him. He had several Norwegian civilians secretly help him to reach safety in Sweden, but it took many attempts to finally make it. On one attempt, Baalsrud journeyed across the snow-capped mountains while hiding from possible Nazi attack. An avalanche caused him to fall 300 feet and left him blind and severely concussed, aimlessly wandering in the snow for days, plagued with hallucinations.

Needless to say, Baalsrud was found and nursed back to health. He continued to try and push for the Swedish border again and again but was held back by Nazi soldiers. He was forced to find shelter in ice holes where he ended up cutting off the rest of his toes to save his feet and at one point, attempted suicide.

Baalsrud eventually made it to safety in Sweden, but not after undergoing a journey through icy hell itself.

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Five of the Greatest Wilderness Survival Stories in History

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Human beings are capa­ble of incred­i­ble things, espe­cial­ly when under the pres­sures to sur­vive. Eat­ing leech­es? Build­ing Ice Caves? Cut­ting off your own toes? Read on, my sur­vival enthused friends. Ricky MeGee The last place on earth you would want to wake up alone is in the Aus­tralian Out­back.

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http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/g2493/7-of-the-most-extreme-survival-stories-of-all-time/

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Alaska native Ada Blackjack was a member of the indigenous Iñupiat people. She was hired by Canadians Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Allan Crawford on an expedition to the Wrangel Islands, which are now considered Russian territory. The goal was to claim them in the name of Canada, and Blackjack was the seamstress and cook of the expedition.

Five members of the expedition were left on the island on September 16, 1921 as a territorial claim, but their rations soon ran low. Three members went off in search of help while Blackjack took care of an ailing crewmate, who later perished, leaving her alone on the island.

Blackjack survived there for two years, not an easy task considering the risk of polar bear attack. She learned to hunt seals and partly survived off their meat until she was finally rescued on August 28, 1923, almost two years after she'd been left on the island.

According to a site run by the University of Alaska-Anchorage, Blackjack did not receive a hero's welcome. Instead, she was criticized for not saving the life of her male crewmate, though the family "eventually vindicated her after meeting with her and issuing a statement that Blackjack had done everything possible to save their son's life." Still, she spent the rest of her life in poverty before her death in 1983.

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The 7 Most Extreme Survival Stories of All Time

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Alaska native Ada Blackjack was a member of the indigenous Iñupiat people. She was hired by Canadians Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Allan Crawford on an expedition to the Wrangel Islands, which are now considered Russian territory. The goal was to claim them in the name of Canada, and Blackjack was the seamstress and cook of the expedition.

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http://www.aronralstonspeaker.aronralstonadventure.com/

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Growing up in Ohio and Indiana before moving to Colorado with his family in 1987, Aron Ralston had little exposure to the wild outdoors.

But by the time he hiked into a remote area of Utah's canyon country in April of 2003, he was an experienced outdoorsman out for a walk in the park. Seven miles into the canyon that day, Aron accidentally dislodged a boulder that crushed and pinned his right hand. After six days of entrapment alone, he freed himself with a cheap multi-tool knife and hiked to a miraculous rescue.

Since his amputation, Aron has written an internationally bestselling book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, spoken to hundreds of audiences around the world, and interviewed with Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, and Jay Leno.

With new prosthetic arms that he designed, Aron returned to his outdoor passions: he finished climbing Colorado's 59 "Fourteeners," in winter, solo; he's skied from the summit of Denali, North America's highest mountain; and, he's led a rafting expedition through the Grand Canyon.

Today, Aron lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he advocates for wilderness protection, and where, in February 2010, he embarked on his biggest adventure yet: raising his toddler son, Leo.

127 Hours, the major-motion-picture adaptation of his book, directed by Danny Boyle and starring James Franco, was nominated for 6 Oscars. Aron's only disappointment was that the soundtrack didn't have enough songs by his favorite band, Phish.

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Aron Ralston - Speaker, Adventurer & Environmental Advocate

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Growing up in Ohio and Indiana before moving to Colorado with his family in 1987, Aron Ralston had little exposure to the wild outdoors. But by the time he hiked into a remote area of Utah's canyon country in April of 2003, he was an experienced outdoorsman out for a walk in the park.

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0724_030724_AronRalston.html

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did climber have to cut off arm to save life?

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Did Climber Have to Cut Off Arm to Save Life?

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After spending five days with his arm pinned beneath a 800-pound (360-kilogram) boulder, backcountry canyon explorer Aron Ralston cut off his hand with a pocketknife and hiked to safety. Had Ralston followed basic rules of backcountry safety, the tragedy might have been avoided.

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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2010/11/aron-ralston-the-real-story.html

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May 03, 2003

By Stephanie Simon
and J. Michael Kennedy
Times Staff Writers

ASPEN, Colo. -- His right arm was pinned beneath an 800-pound boulder. His water bottle was empty. It did not seem likely that a rescue crew could ever spot him in the narrow slit of Blue John Canyon, in the wilds of southeast Utah.

So, after five days, Aron Ralston took out his pocketknife and amputated his arm below the elbow. Then he rigged anchors into the cliff, fixed a rope and rappelled 60 feet to the canyon floor. Bleeding heavily through a makeshift tourniquet, Ralston began to hike.

He had walked about five miles when a helicopter search team spotted him Thursday afternoon on a trail through Canyonlands National Park, drained and dehydrated -- but still pushing forward.

"That's true grit," park ranger Glenn Sherrill said.

On Friday, Ralston was recovering from surgery at a Colorado hospital. And his friends were predicting he would return to the mountain wilderness the first chance he gets.

"I expect him to be out there, doing everything he ever did," nature photographer John Fielder said.

Ralston, 27, is an audacious mountaineer who has climbed 59 of the highest peaks in Colorado. A story this spring in his hometown paper, the Aspen Times, described him climbing alone, in midwinter, in the dead of night, without cell phone, radio, beacon or rope. A mechanical engineer by training, an explorer in spirit, Ralston relishes pushing his body over ice-slick cliffs. He delights in standing alone at a 14,000-foot summit as lightning crashes around him, as gray wolves howl from distant ledges.

The adventure that ended with his self-amputation was supposed to have been a modest one: a bike ride up a canyon, then a hike down through the sculpted sandstone bluffs on a bright spring Saturday. The round trip would take perhaps eight hours. Ralston thought so little of it, he didn't bother to give his roommates a detailed itinerary, as was his practice on mountain climbs.

He completed the ride without incident and left his bike at the top, planning to drive up in his truck later to retrieve it. On the way down, he used rock-climbing equipment to navigate the narrow passages of Blue John Canyon -- which in places is just 3 feet wide. After an hour or two, he came to a giant boulder wedged in the canyon, according to Sherrill, the park ranger.

Ralston scrambled over the boulder and was lowering himself down when it shifted, pinning his arm. He managed to maneuver his feet so that he was standing upright. But he could not free himself.

Authorities said he used his climbing gear to rig a webbed sling so he could try to push the rock away with his feet. It was too heavy.

He stood there, trapped, for five days, during which temperatures dropped to 30 degrees.

On Tuesday, he ran out of water. On Thursday, he "realized that his survival required drastic action," according to a statement by the sheriff's office in Emery County, Utah. He used his pocketknife to free himself the only way he could, by cutting off part of his arm. Though such brutal surgery is hard to imagine, others in desperate straits have done it, managing to sever the muscles and tendons that attach limbs to joints with a modest jackknife.

It is unclear whether Ralston hacked through his bone or whether the bone had been crushed by the boulder.

Once he had completed the job, he used his first-aid kit to tie a tourniquet around his bicep. Then he rappelled down the cliff -- and started walking.

"His instinct for survival was great," Fielder said.

Hours later, Ralston met two hikers in Horseshoe Canyon. They gave him water and walked with him until they could flag down a helicopter from the Utah Department of Public Safety. Ralston's co-workers had alerted the mountain rescue crews just that morning that he had not shown up for work all week.

"He was obviously in major distress, having cut his own arm off, but he was still ambulatory," park ranger Jim Blazik said.

Ralston remained conscious through the brief helicopter ride to Allen Memorial Hospital in Moab, Utah, and walked into the emergency room on his own. He was later flown to St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction, Colo.

Rescuers returned to the canyon later to try to retrieve the amputated limb; they saw it, but couldn't budge the boulder.

"It's a phenomenal story, but Aron is a phenomenal person," said Tim Mutrie, the Aspen reporter who profiled Ralston.

Ralston underwent surgery Thursday night and is in serious condition in the intensive care unit. His "spirits are high and he anxiously looks forward to returning to his love of the outdoors," his mother, Donna Ralston, said in a statement Friday.

Though relieved that Ralston survived, Blazik chided him for hiking through such rugged, remote terrain alone and without leaving a detailed itinerary with friends. "As far as I'm concerned, that was a foolish act, very, very unwisely done," Blazik said, emphasizing that he was not speaking for the park service.

Ralston is accustomed to such criticism.

He has conquered all 59 of the Colorado peaks he counts as "Fourteeners," summits of at least 14,000 feet, with names such as Challenger Point and Mount Massive. (Some climbers, using a different ranking method, count only 54 Fourteeners.)

Five years ago he set out to make history by climbing those summits again -- this time alone, in wintertime.

Veteran climbers have watched with a blend of awe and alarm as he has methodically scrambled up one after another, risking frostbite and worse as he pushes to the top, then signs his name triumphantly in the summit log. Because the risk of avalanche is greatest when the sun is out, he often climbs after midnight.

Only three climbers have ever reached the summit of every Fourteener in Colorado. None has done it solo. Ralston has 14 more to go.

Mutrie, who considers Ralston a friend, says the climber finds joy in tackling monster peaks without the oxygen canisters, satellite-guided tracking systems and communication gear that many mountaineers routinely pack. Stripped down to the bare essentials, Ralston pits himself against nature. "For him, it clarifies the goal," Mutrie said.

An avalanche in February nearly buried Ralston alive as he skied backcountry with two friends; the experience sobered, but did not stop, him. Described by friends as soft-spoken and easygoing off the mountains, Ralston focused on his climbing goals with an intensity few could rival.

"He was trying to be one of the top mountaineers," said Joe Wheadon, who shares a rented house with Ralston in Aspen. "That was what he wanted to do."

Ralston graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with a double major in French and mechanical engineering and a minor in performance piano.

According to Mutrie's story, he worked for several years designing "clean rooms" for microchip production. When his employer, Intel, wouldn't give him three weeks off to climb Mt. McKinley, he quit.

"I could live out of my truck," he told Mutrie. "That's kind of an attractive lifestyle to me, actually."

Instead, Ralston moved to Aspen, took a job in a mountaineering store and packed his truck for the wilderness every chance he got.

Alone with the elements, testing his strength and his savvy, pushing himself past every limit he thought he had, he thrives.

"To challenge yourself, to survive in what can often be hostile conditions -- it's a very primal thing that people like Aron do," his friend Fielder said.

"It's all unnecessary," Ralston told Mutrie, "but at the same time it's entirely necessary for me. I wouldn't lead a happy life doing anything other than what I'm doing. This is my ultimate contribution, whether anybody likes it or not. It's my art."

* Aron Ralston was described as in good spirits, recovering after self-amputating arm pinned by a boulder in the Utah desert.
May 04, 2003
By J. Michael Kennedy
Times Staff Writer

ASPEN, Colo. -- Law enforcement officials gave a more detailed account Saturday of the rescue of the trapped mountaineer who severed his own arm to save his life, even as hospital officials in Grand Junction upgraded hiker Aron Ralston's condition from serious to fair. Ralston, 27, was described as being in good spirits.

An accomplished mountaineer, he was trapped in the Utah desert for five days after a boulder wedged in a narrow slot canyon shifted just enough to pin his right arm. After he ran out of water, he began rapidly losing strength and knew he couldn't last much longer. So Ralston used a pocketknife to cut off his arm below the elbow and then somehow managed to rig up a rope so he could rappel 60 feet to the canyon floor and hike to help.

Since the story came to light on Thursday, Ralston's ordeal has been the subject of national attention, complete with news conferences and live national television appearances for those involved in the rescue.

Ranger Stephen Swanke, who helped coordinate the search, said on Saturday that after officials had narrowed rescue efforts to the Blue John Canyon area of Utah's Canyonlands National Park, a helicopter was immediately dispatched. The helicopter apparently set out at about the same time Ralston had finished severing his arm and began rappelling down the sheer cliff.

Swanke said the canyon was so narrow, the helicopter pilot would never have spotted Ralston. After walking about five miles, Ralston came across a Dutch couple and their son and together they hailed a helicopter flying overhead. Swanke said that Ralston was picked up within a mile of his car.

"If we didn't find him he would have hopped into his car and driven to Green River and reported what had happened himself," Swanke said. The ranger quickly drove to Allen Memorial Hospital in Moab, arriving just in time to see Ralston walking out of the helicopter under his own power. He was also shocked to see Ralston was missing the lower part of his arm.

"When Aron hops out of the helicopter, he tells me very matter-of-factly that he has lost a lot of blood, that he is going to need assistance, that he has amputated his arm and that he has put a tourniquet on it," Swanke said. "He's telling me everything I need to know, as if he was trying to save me the trouble."

Swanke said Ralston's first request was that his mother, Donna, be notified. Then, as the medical staff stabilized him, the two men talked for almost an hour before the drugs given Ralston made him incoherent. Swanke knew that if he didn't get the story then, it might have been days before he could nail down the facts.

"I didn't want to wait that long to find out what's going on here," he said. Among other things, Ralston asked whether the rangers could recover his mountain bike and some climbing equipment left at the slot canyon.

"I've been doing search and rescue for 23 years and I've never seen anything like this," Swanke said. "He was just a phenomenal individual with an unbelievable will to live."

The search began over a much broader area because Ralston, as he often does, set out without telling anyone where he was going. Finally, worried friends filed a missing persons report on Tuesday night after he had failed to show up for work for two consecutive days.

Aspen Police Officer Adam Crider began looking into the case on Wednesday, sending out e-mails to surrounding jurisdictions as well as beginning a trace on Ralston's credit card charges to track his movements. The charges indicated that he had purchased gas in Glenwood Springs, Colo., about 40 miles northwest of Aspen, and that he had then purchased groceries in Moab.

At the same time, rangers in Utah's Canyonlands National Park were also mounting a search for Ralston's maroon Toyota pickup truck. On Thursday, one ranger said he remembered seeing the truck near Blue John Canyon in an area where many people leave their cars when they go hiking and camping. Searchers then narrowed their rescue efforts to that area.

On Saturday, all anyone in Aspen was talking about was Ralston's ordeal, though with outsiders many were protective of him, not wanting to say anything that might be taken in the wrong way.

"Just think about the incredible presence of mind he must have had to just stay in the moment when he could have given up," said Michael Yoder, the operations manager for the all-but-empty Innsbruck Inn. "Is this incredible or what? What kind of strength of character this guy must have."

But over at Bentley's Bar and Restaurant, local Tina Baar took a more practical point of view: "He should have someone with him," she said. "Things like cell phones don't work out there."

Ralston is an expert outdoorsman, comfortable in almost any terrain and weather condition -- the more extreme the better, many noted.

"He understood the risks and knew how to deal with them," said Brian Payne, one of Ralston's four roommates in Aspen.

Payne said Ralston showed him some pictures he took a couple of weeks ago while climbing Pyramid Peak near here. What the pictures showed was that the normal route was impassable because of unstable snow.

"So he told me he just went straight up," said Payne. "And I thought, no one does that."

Friday May 09, 2003
* Aron Ralston speaks publicly about cutting off his arm after a boulder pinned it.
By J. Michael Kennedy
Times Staff Writer

The mountaineer who amputated his right forearm when it became trapped under a boulder in a remote Utah canyon described Thursday how he had to snap the forearm bones before cutting into his flesh with a dull knife.

At a news conference in Grand Junction, Colo., 27-year-old Aron Ralston detailed the events leading up to the amputation and how he was then able to rappel down a steep cliff and walk to within two miles of his car before being spotted by a rescue helicopter. Until Thursday, a week after his rescue, Ralston had been shielded from the media by his parents while he regained his strength.

With his mother beside him and his injured arm in a sling, Ralston first thanked the millions of people who had kept him in their thoughts. He also said doctors told him that he would have lost the arm anyway because the 800-pound boulder had cut off the blood and caused severe soft-tissue damage.

"It occurred to me I could break my bones," said a composed Ralston, who underwent surgery Monday to facilitate the fitting of a prosthesis. "I was able to first snap the radius and then within another few minutes snap the ulna at the wrist and from there, I had the knife out and applied the tourniquet and went to task. It was a process that took about an hour."

Ralston, whose five-day ordeal thrust him into the national limelight, then added new details about what happened in the steep, winding canyon just outside Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah.

Leaving his truck in a parking lot, Ralston first rode his mountain bike about 15 miles cross-country, locking it to a tree at the head of the canyon. For the first leg of the climb, Ralston said he walked with two young women before taking on the tougher part of the canyon. He said he became trapped when he came upon three large boulders wedged in the 3-foot wide canyon that he had to climb over. The second boulder rolled as he tried to scramble over it, trapping his right hand against the wall.

From there, it was five days of frustration as he tried to find a way out of his dilemma. First, he said, he tried to chip away at the boulder and cliff wall with his cheap, multitool knife, which he described as "what you'd get if you bought a $15 flashlight and got a free multiuse tool." When that didn't work, he tried to rig up a way to lift the boulder using his climbing gear. But that, too, did not work. "At no point was I ever able to get that boulder to budge even microscopically," he said.

Ralston said that at first his adrenaline was flowing as he attempted to free his hand, then he realized he had to calm down and concentrate on solving the potentially deadly problem. As the days went by, he felt depression and remorse as well. He told reporters he regretted not leaving a note about where he was going, likening it to when an auto accident occurs the one time the driver isn't wearing a seat belt.

"This is something I almost always do, but I failed to do this time," he said.

On the third day, with his food and water gone and no hope for rescue in sight, Ralston made the drastic decision to cut off his arm. But when he tried to cut his arm, the pocketknife was so dull he couldn't break the skin.

On the fourth day he determined that the only recourse was to snap the bones, and on the fifth day he summoned the nerve to perform the operation, applying a tourniquet using his biking shorts for padding. He said the amputation and bandaging took about an hour. Ralston said he was simply being pragmatic.

"I felt pain and I coped with it," he said.

From there, he crawled through the canyon, then rigged his ropes and rappelled 60 feet to the base of the cliff, a technique that usually requires two hands. And then he began hiking out of the desert, heading for his car. A Dutch couple and their son found him about the time a rescue helicopter came into view.

When Ralston entered the room where the news conference was being held, he took pictures of the assembled gathering.

"These are for me," said Ralston, who quit his engineering job in Albuquerque last year and moved to Aspen, Colo., to devote his time to the outdoors.

He also said he was looking forward to leaving the hospital and returning to the outdoors.

And one other thing: "I'm looking forward to a giant margarita."

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May 03, 2003 By Stephanie Simon and J. Michael KennedyTimes Staff Writers ASPEN, Colo. -- His right arm was pinned beneath an 800-pound boulder. His water bottle was empty. It did not seem likely that a rescue crew could ever spot him in the narrow slit of Blue John Canyon, in the wilds of southeast Utah.

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