Between a Rock and a Hard Place

by Aron Ralston

  My left thigh hurts more than my swollen hand, and after I inspect under the leg of my shorts, I understand why. The skin covering my lower quadriceps is bruised and abraded in a dozen places above my knee. These injuries happened while I was struggling to lift the boulder right after I became trapped. There are a few small clots but no active bleeding. I ripped through my shorts in five places where they were pinched between my leg and the underside of the boulder. The lower right corner of the pocket is ripped open enough that I can see the loop of my half-inch-diameter bike-lock key ring protruding through the fabric.

  It seems important that I keep track of those keys. If, by whatever miracle gets me out of here, I end up back at my bike, I’ll need to be able to unlock the U-lock through my back tire. I reach to take the keys out of the torn pocket and put them in my backpack, but in the second before I withdraw my hand, the ring snags on my pocket lining and I fumble the keys. They fall into a hole between the rounded rocks near my left foot. “Damn!” I shout. They are not only out of my limited reach, but they’ve slipped down a narrow crack where it would be difficult to retrieve them even if I were free.

  I roll my shoulders to the left, maximizing my extension, but I can only barely touch the top of the rock by my left sneaker. Dropping my feet down into the sand downcanyon of the rounded stones, I can touch this same rock more easily, and I see a faint glint of the odd-shaped keys in the sandy hole. Still, my trapped wrist prevents me from moving the planted rock or reaching into the hole. At that moment, a vague memory of a TV program that showed a man with no hands using his toes to type at a keyboard gives me the idea to use my bare foot to reach in under the rock and extract the keys. Once I get my running shoe and sock off my left foot, I step back down into the sand and begin dredging short twigs, desiccated plant stems, and other debris out from the space under the left side of the rock near the wall.

  Even cleared out, the hole is too small for my size-ten foot. But I’m not discouraged; this challenge takes on an added significance. The goal of getting my keys back symbolizes the larger struggle against my entrapment. I seize upon another idea. I retrieve one of the longer sticks that I pulled out from the rocks. It’s a sagebrush stem about two feet long, thin and brittle, and with a convenient bend near the skinny end that might allow me to hook the key ring. I turn on my headlamp to cast some extra light into the hollow and dip the hooked end of my stick down into the hole. The stick easily catches the keys, but it flexes and snaps when I try to fish them up through the gap. Kerplink! The keys jingle against each other as they land back in the sandy fissure. “Damn,” I mutter.

  Without the hook, I can only swat at the keys with the broken end of the stick, but I manage to flick them a few inches closer to my toes. I still can’t quite reach the ring with my foot, so I insert the stick between my big and second toes and thread it into the hole from the side. Peering down into the hole with my headlamp, I guide the stick with a series of delicate, jerking movements until it pokes about two inches through the ring loop. Tugging, I extract the keys with the stick until they slip off the end. They’re not all the way out, but I’ve moved them close enough to the crevice’s exit that I can drop the stick and claw at the sand with my toes, grasping the keys in a foot-fist. Not wanting to accidentally drop them again, I lift my left leg until I can reach under my foot with my left hand. Success! It’s the first victory of my entrapment, and it is sweet. I tuck the keys into an accessory pocket on the right side of my shorts and zip it shut.

  After I put my sock and my shoe back on, not bothering to tie the laces, I decide to try a new approach to pecking at the boulder with my knife. Selecting a softball-sized stone from the pile below my feet, I maneuver it to the top. Now that it’s in reach, I stretch and grab the rock—not without a spike of pain from my trapped wrist—and set the ten-pound stone on top of the boulder next to my knife. I’ve already discounted the idea of smashing a smaller rock directly against the chockstone, as all the available rocks are of the softer pink sandstone, like the walls. Instead, I plan to use the rock to pound my knife into the chockstone, like a hammer and chisel.

  In preparation, I balance my knife so the tip fits in the slight groove I’ve carved in the concavity on the upper right side of the boulder, just above my right wrist, and lean the handle against the canyon wall. I grip the hammer rock tightly to ensure I will accurately hit the head of the knife and bring the hammer down in a gentle trial tap. I’m afraid the rock will kick the knife off the backside of the boulder or down into the rocks beneath my feet. My chiseling setup is as stable as I can manage, but it doesn’t instill much confidence, so I tap the knife carefully a second and third time just to test if it will skitter away. It stays put, but I need to hit harder.

  Here goes…I drive the hammer rock into my knife with ten times more force than that last tap. Karunch! The rock detonates in my hand, splitting into one large and a half-dozen smaller pieces, leaving me with a handful of crumbling sandstone as shrapnel flies up into my face. The force of the blow knocks my knife off the chockstone, and it bounces off my shorts, hitting the sand half a yard in front of my right foot. “I can’t win here, nothing’s working,” I think, but my thin discouragement is thankfully fleeting.

  I lick my lips and taste the coating of pulverized grit that has stuck to the dried sweat on my face. My knife is out of reach for my left hand, and nudging it with my foot only buries it in the sand. (At least I know I can get it back.) Taking note of the crushed rock that’s all over the chockstone and my right arm, I sigh. I drop the rest of the hammer rock in front of my feet, attentive to my knife. I take off my left shoe and sock again, grab the multi-tool in my outstretched toes, and retrieve it easily.

  “Come on, Aron, no more stupid stuff like that,” I chastise myself, knowing I won’t be trying the hammer-chisel approach again. “That’s the last thing you can afford, to lose your knife.” Somehow I know it will be vital to my survival. Even though I’m certain it’s far too dull to saw through my arm bones, I might need it for other things, like cutting webbing, or maybe making my backpack into a kind of wearable jacket to keep me warmer at night.

  It’s going on eight o’clock, and a breeze is blowing softly downcanyon. Every few minutes, the wind accelerates, flicking sand over the ledge above me into my face. I bow my head to protect my face beneath the brim of my hat. This keeps most of the dust out of my eyes, but I can feel the grit on my contacts. After huddling from a half-dozen cycles of the breeze, I catch myself not doing anything or even thinking about anything; I’m in a fleeting daze that dissolves when I become aware of it. Coming back around to my current situation, I look at the broken-up dirt and rock pieces covering my right arm. Using my fingers, then my knife, to get to the more confined spots around my right hand, I brush off the dirt. With pursed lips, I puff the last dust particles off my hand. It’s ridiculous, this compulsion to keep my arm clean, but being tidy is one of the few means by which I can exert even a small degree of control over my circumstances.

  I resume my excavation as darkness seeps from my penumbral hole and spills into the desert above me, turning dusk to night. I turn my headlamp back on and pick a new target on the chockstone—a beige-pink heart of sandstone ringed by hard black mineral features. This spot is two inches above my wrist, so I am cautious with my strikes until I can chisel out a starter hole that allows me to jab harder at the chockstone. I establish a rhythm, pecking at two jabs per second, pausing to blow away dust once every five minutes. Time slips past. I can see a tiny measure of progress as a small salmon-colored flake emerges beside the shallow trough I’m carving out of the chockstone. If I’m right, I might be able to dig out enough material around this pastel nugget so that I can pop it out as a single chip.

  I slip into the flow of intent action. Before I know it, three hours are gone, and it’s nearly midnight. I have isolated the little flake on three sides—left, top, and bottom—by a channel about an eighth of an inch wide, and I’m ready to pry it off the boulder
. Not wanting to accidentally break off the tip of my knife blade, I switch my multi-tool to the file. The file is not only thicker and sturdier, it’s also somewhat more expendable. With the file tip positioned in the in-cut groove, I lever the handle toward the rock and watch for the flake to come flying for my eyes, holding my breath. I feel my tool biting into my palm just as the flake crumbles and breaks away. Yes! A dimesized piece of rock pops off the chockstone and falls onto my trapped wrist. It’s not as big as I could have hoped, but I’m pleased that my strategy paid off with at least a little progress. With the flake removed, I’ve exposed some softer rock that I can extract more easily. Pecking for another hour eradicates almost as much stone as what came off in the flake. I save the largest chips that fall on my trapped arm, setting them side by side on the top of the boulder. My collection grows as I enlarge the minute crater, but as my line of chips increases, so does my fatigue. The aching pain of my arm nags at my mind too much for my grogginess to matter; I need to work at getting out of here while I have my strength. Besides, even if I wanted to sleep, I couldn’t. The penetrating chill of the night air and occasional breezes urge me to keep attacking the rock to generate warmth, and when my consciousness does fade, my knees buckle and my weight tugs on my wrist in an immediate and agonizing call to attention.

  Perhaps because of my growing fatigue, a song is playing over and over in my head. The melody is from the first Austin Powers movie, which I watched a few nights ago with one of my roommates, and now just a single line of the ending credits’ chorus is repeating on an infinite loop.

  “Yeah, that’s not annoying at all, Aron,” I say sarcastically. “Can’t you get something else on the juke?” It doesn’t matter what else I try to hum—even some of my favorite standbys—I can’t free myself from the mind-lock of Austin Powers.

  Taking a break, I extract from my main pack the rope bag, my harness and climbing hardware, CamelBak pack, and water bottle, then strap the large backpack on my back for the first time since the afternoon. I figure—correctly—that the pack’s padding will help me retain my body heat. I remove the CamelBak’s blue water reservoir and slide its empty pack alongside my pinned arm. I can get the inch-thick insulation only a few inches past my elbow, because the boulder has my arm pressed tight against the wall from my wrist to my middle forearm. But with the small pack in place, most of my arm and shoulder is held off the cold slab. I remove my rope from its bag, leaving it neatly coiled, and stack it on a rock sitting on the canyon floor in front of my knees. With the rock padded by the rope, I can bend my knees forward and lean in to the rock, easing the weight on my legs a little. I still can’t relax, but now I can change my position from time to time and stimulate the circulation in my legs.

  It’s just before one-thirty in the morning when I open my water bottle for the second time and have a small sip. I’ve been thinking about having a drink for at least two hours, but I was purposefully delaying until I made it halfway through the night. Four and a half hours down, four and a half to go. The water is expectedly refreshing, a reward for having gone so long since those first extravagant gulps some eight hours ago. Still, I worry. I know that the remaining twenty-two ounces are the key to my survival. But it’s a puzzle as to how much I should drink or conserve and how long I should try to make it last. Mulling it over, I settle on a plan to have a small sip every ninety minutes. It will give me something to gauge the time, something to look forward to as the night advances.

  With fatigue buckling my knees periodically, I decide to construct a seat that I can use to completely take my weight off my legs. Getting into my harness is the easy half of the equation. Stepping into the leg loops, I pull up the waist belt and weave the thick webbing through the buckle; with the limited dexterity of my single hand, I skip the usual last step of doubling back the belt—a precaution necessary for climbing safety but more protection than I need in my current situation. Now comes the hard part: getting some piece of my pared arsenal of climbing gear hung up on a rock overhead, something suspended substantially enough to hold my weight.

  I have my eye on a crack system that starts on the south wall, about six feet above and to the left of my head. The crack is actually a gap between the wall and the eight-foot-diameter chockstone suspended six feet in front of me. This is the boulder forming the twelve-foot drop-off that I reached at the end of the chockstone gauntlet, the one I was descending when I stepped onto the chockstone that pinned my wrist. I hadn’t taken much time to look closely at this chockstone earlier, but now I see two features that might help me in building an anchor. One is the crack, tapering from the upper gap to a pinch point that unfortunately flares open toward me; the other is an apparent horn that I might use as an anchor if I could lasso my rope or a piece of my yellow webbing around it. But how can I fabricate a block to throw into the crack and pull it down until it catches at the pinch point? There are two options: either clipping a few of my carabiners together in a wad on a knot in my rope; or tying a knot directly into the rope or onto a piece of webbing to jam the knot itself in the constriction. In either case, it will be very difficult to toss the apparatus with enough precision for it to slip into the crack and catch at the pinch point.

  Still, it’s worth a try. First I unwrap about thirty feet of my climbing rope. At the end, I tie a series of overhand knots to make a fist-sized block. With some extra rope stacked on top of the chockstone, I cast the fist up at the crack, but it bounces off the wall. I realize the combination of my left hand’s awkward throwing abilities and the nature of the rope to fall short as it lifts more of its own weight are an unforgiving mix. I will have to make the perfect toss. Perhaps it will be easier with a heavier lead. I decide to add three carabiners from the climbing supplies on my harness to a figure-eight knot, replacing the rope fist.

  Each toss takes two minutes to set up, and my first dozen tries fall short, bouncing off the wall or the face of the chockstone, or slipping out of the crack before the carabiners can wedge tightly. I refine my procedure of stacking the trailing rope so it unfurls with as little drag as possible, and my accuracy improves. Of the next dozen tries, five of them land my carabiners in the crack, but each time they pull free. I add a fourth carabiner to my improvised grappling device. With a brilliantly lucky throw on my next try, the carabiner bundle hits the wide mouth of the crack and drops into the pinch point, and with a tug at just the right moment, the block wedges tight. I test the constriction’s strength and watch the carabiners bite into the rock. I’m worried that the sandstone pinch point will break and let the ’biners loose, but the metal links jam hard against one another, and the rock holds the stress without a problem. As a wave of happiness washes over my tired mind, I tie another figure-eight knot on a loop of the anchored rope that drapes back over the chockstone near my waist, and I clip myself to the system. With two adjustments of the knot to cinch my harness a little higher and keep my weight from tugging on my arm, I finally lean back and take some weight off my legs. Ahhhhh. I relax for the first time, and my body celebrates a victory over the strain of standing still for over twelve hours.

  I take my water bottle from its perch and have a small sip right at three A.M. My respite is complete but disappointingly short—just fifteen minutes until the harness restricts the blood flow to my legs and I have to stand again. There is the risk that if I sit too long, I will cause damage to my legs or cause a blood clot to form. Long before that danger manifests, the harness makes my hamstrings ache where the leg loops hold my weight. I alternate standing and sitting, establishing a pattern that I repeat in twenty-minute intervals.

  In these coldest hours before dawn, from three until six, I take up my knife again and hack at the chockstone. I can chip at the rock either standing or sitting. I continue to make minimal but visible progress in the divot. After sips of water at four-thirty and six A.M., I take stock of the rock I’ve managed to eliminate during the past fifteen hours of tiring work. I estimate that at the rate I’ve averaged, I would have to c
hip at the rock for 150 hours to free my hand. Discouraged, I know I will need to do something else to improve my situation.

  Just after eight o’clock, I hear a rushing noise filtering down from the canyon above me, a wind swoosh that pulses three times. I look up as a large black raven flies over my head. He’s heading upcanyon, and with each flap of his wings, echoes filter down to my ears. At the third flap, he screeches a loud “Ca-caw” and then disappears from my window of the overhead world. It’s still clammy cold in the depths of the canyon fissure, but I can see bright daylight on the north wall seventy feet above me. Broken strands of stratus clouds float by. I turn off my headlamp. I have made it through the night.

  Around nine-thirty A.M. a dagger of sunlight appears behind me on the canyon floor. The light blade is teasingly close but still three feet behind my shoes. I haven’t yet fully rewarmed from the night’s chill, and I yearn for even a small touch of sun on my skin. After five minutes, the dagger has stabbed toward my heels enough that when I step down next to the hole where I dropped my keys, stretching my body until my arm pulls at my wrist, I can extend my left leg behind me so the sunshine caresses my ankle and lower calf. For ten minutes, I hold still, alternating between stretching out my left and then my right leg as the sunlight moves across the canyon floor. Like a yoga pose, this sun stretch welcomes a new day. The question crosses my mind of how many mornings will I be here to perform this matinal rite, but I push it back and relish the soothing warmth on my calves. Climbing up the north wall above my right leg, the light dagger bends and warps over the sandstone undulations until it ascends above my leg’s reach. Watching the beam scale the last three feet to where a suspended chockstone blocks it from my view, I realize it is the only direct sun I will get during the day.