Aron Ralston - Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Skiing off K2, I worried less about my hands than the stability of the snow. The powder turns I laced down the face of K2 joined those first S’s of Mount Harvard on a short list of my favorite backcountry ski descents. By the time I arrived back at my Moon Lake campsite, however, I knew something wasn’t right with my hands-they wouldn’t warm up again, no matter what I tried. Holding them over my lit stove, I melted my liner gloves in the flame without feeling any warmth in my fingertips. Tearing the molten fabric off my hands, I saw for the first time the eggshell-white pallor of my fingers and thumbs. Not good.

I hastened my departure from camp without preparing any food. I wasn’t so much afraid of frostbite; I accepted what had happened and wanted to minimize any further tissue damage. I had climbed a peak in a style that, over the course of the last thirty hours, had completely satisfied my yearnings for mountain experiences. That I had attained partial- and full-thickness frostbite on eight of my fingers, including both thumbs, was part of that adventure. While I didn’t understand the depth of the damage at the time, I put on a dry set of liner gloves and kept my barely functional hands protected from the cold for the seven-mile ski descent.

When I arrived home in Aspen, instead of going to the hospital (which is what I should have done), I treated myself for the frostbite. To start with, I took four tablets of extra-strength pain-reducing medication to prepare me for the next part of the procedure. I waited a half hour for the pills to take effect, filled the kitchen sink with hot water, and experimented with how fast the steaming faucet had to run to maintain a consistent hot-tub temperature in the plugged washbasin. Standing alone, I held both my hands in the basin for an hour, watching my fingertips change from white to black, red, orange, and green, obscenely screaming out at the throbbing pain. At times I had to seize my right wrist with my left hand to keep from yanking it out of the water-it was more damaged and caused me more agony. My roommates were all out of the house, and our neighbors must have been gone, too, or they may well have notified the police of a murder in progress. Over the hour, I hoped again and again to see blisters form under the skin of my fingers. Blisters meant the underlying tissue would probably recover, though never fully regain its original circulation; whereas no blisters meant the cold damage was severe and I could lose portions of those fingers. One after another, excruciating blisters bubbled up at the end of each finger, back to the first knuckle on most of them. I was thankful for the fiery swelling.

I subsequently decided I would take five weeks off from solo mountaineering, allowing my hands to heal from the frostbite, even though I had two peaks left in the Elk Range-the Maroon Bells. There was plenty to occupy me until my fingers grew new layers of protective skin: Phish was touring the West for the first time in three years; I had a hut trip planned with some friends from New Mexico; and there was lots of in-area telemark skiing to be done with my Aspen pals. But even this “downtime” wouldn’t be free of risk.

Two weeks after my ascent of Capitol, I headed over to a mountain range just east of Mount of the Holy Cross to join six friends from the Albuquerque Mountain Rescue Council and five of their relatives on an annual backcountry ski trip. This year’s destination was the Fowler-Hilliard Hut on Resolution Mountain above Camp Hale. We met in Leadville and divvied up food and drink loads to be carried in our packs to the hut. The 10th Mountain Division huts are named for the World War II ski infantry who fought the infamous Battle of Riva Ridge in Italy. Their main training camp for two years was Camp Hale, halfway between Leadville and Vail. Many of the war veterans returned to Colorado, where they helped propagate the postwar ski-area development boom with their passion for skiing and familiarity with the region. The ski areas of Breckenridge, Vail, and Aspen were some of the largest of the 10th Mountain veteran enterprises. While the backcountry huts weren’t established until the 1980s, they are dedicated to the memory of individuals whose love for country took them overseas to protect the freedom that I find most glorified in the mountains.

After five hours plowing through two feet of fresh snow along the six-mile approach to the hut, we settled into our weekend home and ate gourmet appetizers of oysters, spicy hummus, clams, and kippered fish on crackers, and drank three rounds of hot cocoa and schnapps. Spying out the hut’s picture windows, I lusted to take some turns in the east bowl of Resolution Peak directly in front of the hut. When talk turned to action, two of my Mountain Rescue colleagues, Mark Beverly and Chadwick Spencer, joined me in buckling up our boots and preparing our avalanche safety equipment for the short ascent.

Our threesome skinned up to Resolution Peak on the wind-scoured northeast ridge, starting at 4:50 P.M. and summiting the 11,950-foot peak just after 5:15. Darkness was coming quickly, but while Mark and I waited for Chadwick to arrive, we took a five-minute break to survey the ridgeline of the Continental Divide to the east and the Eagle River watershed and Mount of the Holy Cross to the west. Beyond the White River National Forest, only thirty miles away (but a three-hour drive from the trailhead), was my home in Aspen. I recounted my solo winter ascent of Holy Cross for Mark, and the night ski off the 12,000-foot saddle when I’d seen the elk in the meadow. I also spoke of the hairball adventure I’d had with my emergency bivouac en route to the rock shelter and the contrasting triumph I’d felt at surmounting the Halo Ridge.

Even though this was our first trip together, I knew Mark was one of the best climbers on our rescue team. I admired his technical climbing and rescue rigging skills, advanced medical training, and guiding experience. In sharing the details of one of my recent climbs, I think I was trying to impress him, as he had impressed me with his Canadian ice-climbing trips. He surprised me when he responded with an accepting but seemingly unmoved reply: “I can’t be excited for you, Aron. I don’t do climbs like that. But I think it’s great for you-as long as you’re happy.”

“Yeah, I am. I’m living my dream.”

Mark was saying that he didn’t aspire to do winter solos, and it seemed like he was making sure I was doing them for the right reasons-climbing not for bragging rights, or the perceived admiration of others, but because it made me happy. It was a subtle check that I had cleared in myself a long time back, but I was grateful for his reminder.

Once Chadwick joined us, we posed for a group portrait with Elk Ridge behind us. Skiing off the rock-strewn summit, Mark led us back down the wind-packed ridge, a safe but unappealing ski descent because of the thin, icy snow. After I slipped and fell to avoid an exposed tree root, I called out to Mark: “Hey, this sucks! I’m gonna head over to the powder.” I had borrowed a set of new powder skis from the Ute in Aspen and was itching to try them out in the untracked bowl. It had been a year since I had first freed my heel and started telemark skiing. Chadwick had given me some of my first pointers on technique, and I was excited to show him how much I’d improved. Leaving the ridge, I skied out to my right onto the softer snow, which got deeper and deeper the farther I traversed across the top of the forty-degree bowl.

Mark stopped slightly downhill from me on the ridge. Chadwick was behind me, traversing to the right, parallel and uphill from my tracks. None of us called out to dig a snow-study pit to check the snow stability and the likelihood of an avalanche, but I felt confident in the snowpack from having been out climbing and skiing the backcountry all winter. Success on the fourteener climbs and providential salvation from the string of close calls had bred in me a cavalier attitude toward the real avalanche danger. We spread out in the standard routine to expose one skier at a time to potential slide terrain. I arrived at the top of the lowest-angle fall line that started at thirty-eight degrees and eased off to about thirty-two degrees above a cluster of twenty fully grown pine trees.