Hiker...pinned...boulder...cuts off arm...repells to safety

[ck1]

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http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E53%257E1364264,00.html

Pinned hiker cuts off arm
Aspenite amputates after 5 days under boulder in Utah
By Nancy Lofholm, Denver Post Western Slope Bureau
An Aspen mountaineer who was pinned by a nearly 1,000-pound boulder for five days in a remote slot canyon in eastern Utah cut off his arm with a pocketknife, rappelled down a rock wall and hiked until he was found by a search helicopter Thursday afternoon.
Special/Aron Ralson
Aron Ralston, shown in a self-portrait taken in June.


Aron Ralston was in serious condition Thursday night after undergoing surgery at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction, where he was airlifted after his ordeal.

"He's obviously one tough guy," said Sgt. Mitch Vetere, one of the Emery County Sheriff's Office searchers who first located Ralston in a remote area 60 miles south of Green River, Utah.

Vetere didn't know just how tough.

Ralston, 27, an avid climber who has topped 49 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, also escaped death in an avalanche on Tennessee Pass in February. He was caught in an avalanche that buried all but his head and one arm.

Ralston's latest ordeal began Saturday afternoon when he rode his mountain bike alone into Bluejohn Canyon near The Maze district of Canyonlands National Park for what was planned as a day jaunt through the desert country. He had left his bike and hiked into a 3-foot-wide slot canyon when a boulder that searchers estimated at 800 to 1,000 pounds fell on him. It pinned his right arm, according to information from the sheriff's offices in Emery and Wayne counties.

Ralston told rescuers that Thursday morning he realized he would not survive unless he took drastic action. He had run out of water Tuesday.

Ralston told them he used his pocketknife to amputate his right arm below the elbow Thursday morning. He then applied a tourniquet and administered first aid from a kit he had in his backpack. He rigged anchors and fixed a rope to rappel nearly 75 feet to the bottom of Bluejohn Canyon.

He hiked downstream into adjacent Horseshoe Canyon, where he encountered two hikers who flagged down a Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter about 3 p.m. Thursday.

The helicopter had been searching for Ralston after he was reported missing by someone who said he had not called in or shown up for work at Ute Mountaineering in Aspen for four days.

Vetere said Ralston, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts and carrying a backpack, was still walking when they reached him. He had a tourniquet wrapped around his right biceps but was bleeding profusely and was dehydrated. Vetere gave him a bottle of water, and he was bundled into the helicopter for a 12-minute ride to Allen Memorial Hospital in Moab.

"He was in pretty rough shape. ... But he communicated with us all the way to the hospital," Vetere said.

Searchers went back by helicopter Thursday afternoon to the canyon where Ralston had been pinned to try to retrieve his arm. They spotted it under the huge boulder but were unable to move it, Vetere said. Ralston's rappelling ropes were still in place.

Ralston was stabilized at Allen Memorial Hospital and transported to St. Mary's in Grand Junction.

VIDEO
Official news conference.


Reading of family statement.




Nature photographer John Fielder said he hired Ralston to carry gear and act as a guide on a photography trip into the Rawah Wilderness Area near Fort Collins last summer. Fielder said he was not surprised Ralston survived the accident in the Utah wilderness.

"He's one of the most skilled outdoors people I've worked with. He's a real tough guy," Fielder said. "He has great survival instincts. He is supremely confident in his survival skills."

Ralston did question his own judgment in the outdoors following his brush with death in February.

He was backcountry skiing with several friends on Tennessee Pass when they triggered an avalanche. A friend who was partially buried dug Ralston out, and the two dug out a third friend who was buried for nearly 15 minutes.

Ralston recently told The Post that he had ignored weather and terrain indicators of high avalanche danger. He said he learned a tough lesson and was wiser for the experience.

"It was a learning experience. It cost me several friendships," Ralston said.

In Utah, Vetere said Ralston was hiking and biking in an area where many people travel alone. A parking lot near the trailhead is often filled with cars on weekends. But Ralston set out south from a trail that most visitors normally take north.

"I would say he is as qualified as anybody else to be out there by himself," Vetere said.

Les Thompson, commander of the Emery County sheriff's Search and Rescue Team, said people come to the wild and remote desert country in eastern Utah without appreciating how rough and dangerous it can be.

"We've killed a lot of people in this country. They just don't pay attention when they come out here," Thompson said.

Ralston's pocketknife amputation wasn't the first in the region.

In October 1993, a fisherman from Conifer used a fishing knife to cut off his left leg at the knee when he was trapped by a fallen boulder near St. Mary's Glacier.

In recounting the experience soon after, Bill Jeracki said he yelled for help for hours, then the weather started to change for the worse and he became concerned for his survival.

He applied a tourniquet, then carved around his lower leg, cutting beneath the kneecap, severing the muscles and tendons that attach the lower leg at the knee joint. He used hemostats from his fishing kit to close the severed artery and vein, then crawled back to his truck and drove to Alice.

In July of that year when Donald Wyman, a 37-year-old bulldozer operator, was forced to amputate his leg with a 3-inch pocketknife after an oak tree pinned him in western Pennsylvania.

Denver Post staff writers Jim Kirksey and Steve Lipsher contributed to this report.
_________________
-Colin

"The Journey is the Destination"

[Canyon Dweller]

That is seriously intense. Thanks for posting it.
_________________
Mountains are there to be climbed!

"Meaningless! Meaningless," says the teacher, "Utterly Meaningless, Everything is meaningless."-Ecclesiastes 1:2

[GeorgAz]

That is all truly amazing.Wow! What will to survi ve!

[Arizonaheat]

That is for sure, GeorgeAZ. A similar incident happened in Colorado several years ago, except it involved a leg, the results were the same.

One never knows how strong their survival instinct is or how they will react in a certain situation, until confronted in real life.
_________________
Our lives are not determined by what happens to us but by how we react to what happens, not by what life brings to us, but by the attitude we bring to life.

[ck1]

I thought of that story from Backpacker a few months back about the solo hiker who died after spending 11 days pinned by a boulder...

I think stories such as these are of great interest, not so much for the gore, but rather to be learned from, and to question ourselves...
_________________
-Colin

"The Journey is the Destination"

[Daryl]

Great story, I've been amazed reading about it. I'd like to know how big of a knife he had an how long it took to accomplish the task. I can't imagine...

Lesson for the day, if he was not hiking/climbing alone help would have been there in hours and he'd probably still have his arm today... It doesn't matter how great of a outdoorsman you are.
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[Canyon Dweller]

I have no problems with hiking alone, but telling somebody where your at. I think that was his worst mistake.
_________________
Mountains are there to be climbed!

"Meaningless! Meaningless," says the teacher, "Utterly Meaningless, Everything is meaningless."-Ecclesiastes 1:2

[Nealz]

[mike t]

[Daryl]

We can only speculate on saving his arm. if help would have gotton there, even after 2 days, they would have had plenty of time to bring in equipment to free the arm instead of cutting it off. The fact that he survived 5 days there says the damage couldn't have been too bad to the arm. If so he would have bleed to death.

Either way, if this guy was an average hiker he could be dead today. If he wasn't alone it would have been a fairly routine rescue that may have made a 5 minute blurb on the evening news.

I'm part of a local search and rescue team. In the two years I've been in search and recue we've recovered several hikers that didn't make it. All of them were alone. Hiking alone is more dangerous, period.
_________________

[mike t]

[Daddee]

That dude is officially the baddest dude on the planet. Do NOT mess with him.
_________________
"Only small minds want always to be right."
- Louis XIV

"...haven't you lived long enough to know that two men may honestly differ about a question and both be right?"
- Abraham Lincoln

[Canyon Dweller]

[mike]

[CatValet]

I guess the only thing worse would have been if the blade broke off halfway thru....

Hope I never have to test my big Cold Steel blade like that....-R