Aron Ralston - Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Well, if that was it, Aron, then the chockstone should split in two and fall harmlessly to the sand right…about…now.

Predictably, nothing happens. For another thirty seconds, nothing continues to happen, and I quit waiting. Maybe that small epiphany was an emotional table scrap, something to ease my tired conscience. I know I’m not trapped here waiting for enlightenment-I’m trapped here because there’s a huge boulder sitting on my hand. How big is this thing, anyway? It’s heavier than I am, but I made it move a little yesterday when I was trying to lift it. I doubt it weighs much more than a couple hundred pounds, or there’s no way I could’ve budged it at all. With a 6:1 mechanical advantage system multiplying most of my body’s weight standing in the haul-line foot loops, I should be able to dislodge the chockstone even if I lose half the lifting force back to friction. It’s too late in the evening to start reconfiguring the pulley system. I’m using most of the critical pieces of webbing as limb warmers, and I don’t want to give up even their slight insulation.

Night erupts from the canyon and fills the sky. Closing my eyes, I make a wish and give a visual voice to my deepest desire. I see myself catching a lift on the incessant wind, riding the tidal wave of darkness out of here, letting it carry me like a raven over the desert scrub straight up to the void. I soar over the barren buttes, maroon tablelands, and buckled mantle of central Utah, heading west over the frigid black Great Basin and Sierra Nevada Mountains devoid of city lights, the land performing a magician’s trick of spectral transformation as I repeal the sunset and catch the day again somewhere over the Pacific Coast.

When my struggle feels most difficult, time swells, my agony expanding with it exponentially. I age faster, especially at night, when I lose the visual cues of time’s actual progression. Three minutes of tormented shivering consume ten minutes of perceived experience, like I’ve fallen into a wormhole where I endure excruciating maltreatment for immeasurable eons only to return to normal consciousness. But I have found an antidote to this misery: In the hazy freedom of my imagination, I dip and weave in the whispering clouds over the sea, whitecaps changing to swells as I head still farther west. I fly higher through the atmosphere, glancing back to watch the land turn into a green frame around the cobalt ocean, islands shrinking to pinpoints. Slicing up through icy swirls of crystallized water vapor, I spiral into the vast gulf of space, jettisoning my body in a final act of evolution, metamorphosing into a splash of colored light, an iridescent cluster of hovering photons.

A bout of shivering shuts down my fantasy, the dancing particles of light dissolving to black, and I open my eyes. My mind journey felt short, but checking my watch, I see that it’s nine-forty-five P.M. It was after nine when I noticed that it was dark enough to see stars. The same brilliant constellations I saw last night appear again in the narrow gap between the fissure’s walls. There are two that stand out from the others, like a pair of interlaced horseshoes. I wonder if one of them is the curved stinger of Scorpio, the Zodiac sign of my birthday, October 27. Regardless of their names, the unsympathetic stars are a somber reminder that there are no lights to pollute the view. I am so far removed from civilization that I might as well be on the moon.

“Ungg-gggu-ggga-gggngh.” My throat gives forth a series of unintelligible sounds as my teeth chatter, clacking spastically like a woodpecker’s drill.

Trying to capture what warmth I can from the continuing shudders, I rearrange my ad hoc clothing. The top coils of my climbing rope have loosened, exposing my thighs to the cold. I cinch the wraps tighter and weave the upper end around the highest five strands, hoping that will hold the coils above my knees. I experiment with using my rope bag like a miniature bivy sack, putting my left hand and arm inside the unzipped fabric tube, then tucking my head inside the flap. The tight confines of the bag force my head forward onto my wrist, which is marginally more comfortable if I set my left hand on my right biceps, near the shoulder. Sitting in my harness with my left hip against the canyon wall, I’m stable enough that I can lean to the right, resting my head on my left hand at my right elbow, and relax my upper body. It’s as if I’m putting my head down for a desk nap in elementary school.

I have produced enough warmth that I can sit in my harness inactive for almost fifteen minutes before the shivers come back. As my body quivers, the ropes loosen around my legs, and I gradually submit to fidgeting with my meager coverings for another half hour. Using my headlamp, I fuss over the ropes, fool around with the webbing looped around my right arm, adjust the punched-out camera sack on my left arm, squirm around in my harness to stimulate the circulation in my legs, and finally tuck my arm and head back into the rope bag, reassuming the position, as I have come to think of it. Another fifteen minutes of blessed idleness and then more shivers. A pattern emerges. I fidget for a half hour, raising my metabolic output enough that I can ease back in my harness for fifteen minutes. But always the cold wins, and convulsions rip through me, my jaw clenching in uncontrollable spasms until I think I’m going to shatter my teeth.

After the fourth cycle of action and repose, it’s midnight, time for my designated sip of water. The hours went by quickly. Not as fast as last night, but I’m conserving my calories more than I did last night. I pick up the Nalgene from its spot in the sand and curse myself for tightening the lid too much-I can’t unscrew it. Squeezing the bottle between my legs, I manage to get the lid open and bring it to my lips, tilting it just enough that a half ounce of cool water splashes onto my tongue. I crave more. The sip initiates a chain reaction of escalating thirst that culminates in a half-crazed desire to drink the entire cup of remaining fluid.

Don’t you do it, Aron.

Commanding my hand to reseal the Nalgene, I recognize that I am managing to control my reactions and fight my raw instincts with a rational strategy for long-term preservation. Sometime, in the next twenty-four hours, most likely, I will run out of water. I wonder what my discipline will have me do then. Will I continue my ritual of opening the Nalgene, trying to eke the last molecule from the hard plastic bottle? I envision my tongue dryly searching the rim of the long-empty bottle, scraping over the Lexan in a deranged hope.

Returning to the pattern of fidgeting and rest, I mentally pace myself for the next six hours. Eight more cycles of adjusting the ropes and coverings, interspersed with ten- or fifteen-minute periods of stasis, and dawn will be here. I can’t sleep, but sitting still helps me focus my energy. I avoid thinking about rescue or any of my self-rescue options. Most of the time, I stare at my breath, condensing on the inside of the waterproof rope bag. For some reason, it’s more comforting to leave my headlamp on for a few minutes each time I tuck my head into the bag; I think it helps stave off claustrophobia. The bag is a bit bigger than a plastic grocery sack, the kind you’re not supposed to let children play with. It’s counterintuitive to put my head inside it, but it makes a noticeable improvement in reducing my heat emission to the night sky. Once I’m accustomed to the black-plastic-coated interior, I turn off my headlamp and listen to my breathing, feel the moisture building up inside the bag, and relax as best I can in the position, waiting for light.

It’s colder now. My watch thermometer registers 53 degrees F-chilly, but I’m sustaining myself all right. As maddening as it is for my body to launch into another round of quaking tremors, I’m reassured that my involuntary reflexes are still functioning well. They could as easily have ceased to perform due to the stress and trauma of my accident. How lucky I am that the boulder didn’t cause any significant blood loss. I would have gone into hypovolemic shock, my heart trying to pump an insufficient volume of blood through my body’s piping. It is a meaningless reprieve. There will come a time when my body’s metabolic processes no longer behave according to their operating codes, and then shapeless death will bear me away.