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To save his life, hiker cuts off arm

Pinned by an 800-pound boulder in a narrow canyon, the outdoorsman resorts to drastic steps.

Hiking his way through a 3-foot-wide section of Utah's Blue John Canyon, Aron Ralston had no warning before the giant boulder shifted onto him, pinning his right arm in a crack in the canyon wall.

He had been stuck for four days when his water ran out. On the sixth day, the 27-year-old mountain climber knew there was only one way he could survive.

Using a pocketknife, Ralston cut off his own arm.

He made the cut below the elbow and applied a tourniquet. He then administered first aid from a kit in his backpack. Rigging anchors, he fixed a rope and rappelled 60 feet to the floor of the remote canyon near Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah.

Ralston, an avid outdoorsman, then began to hike back to his truck. He encountered two tourists and had been walking for seven miles when a rescue helicopter spotted him.

The rescuers, who had been alerted that he hadn't shown up for work, found him about 3 p.m.Thursday.

During the 12-minute chopper flight to a hospital in nearby Moab, Utah, Ralston was clearly tired but asked only for water, Emery County Sheriff's Sgt. Mitch Vetere said. He climbed out of the helicopter and walked to the emergency room, his bandaged arm in a makeshift sling.

He was flown later to a hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., where he was in serious condition Friday. Officials at St. Mary's Hospital said Ralston was expected to recover.

In a statement, Donna Ralston said her son survived because of his strong physical and mental condition.

"He was able to rationally consider alternatives relative to his situation," she said. "His spirits are high and he anxiously looks forward to returning to his love of the outdoors."

Friends say Ralston's expeditions have been known to inspire awe. He has climbed 49 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks and was preparing for an ascent of Alaska's Mount McKinley.

"To be honest, sometimes we get pretty scared with some of the things he's doing," said Brion After, manager of the Ute Mountaineering store in Aspen, where Ralston works.

Ralston, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, began what was to be a day hike April 26. He was canyoneering, an extreme sport whose popularity is growing in the wildlands of the West. It combines hiking and climbing up, then down rugged, remote terrain with rock-climbing gear.

Vetere said many people travel alone in the area where Ralston was hiking, and Ralston traveled south from a trail that most hikers take north.

In the narrow canyon, Ralston pushed his arm into a crack and the boulder shifted, pinning him, said Steve Swanke of Canyonlands National Park. He tried to use his ropes and anchors to free himself, but the rock wouldn't budge.

Searchers who returned to the canyon to try to retrieve Ralston's severed limb said the boulder weighed 800 to 1,000 pounds.

It was not Ralston's first brush with death.

While Ralston was trapped this week, the Denver Post published a story detailing how he and a few friends with an insatiable "taste for powder" decided to ski the back-country peaks of Colorado on a dangerous weekend last February and narrowly escaped an avalanche. Authorities said that all but Ralston's head and one arm had been buried in the snow in that incident. They said he was lucky to survive. He walked away with only a black eye.

"It was horrible," Ralston told the newspaper. "It should have killed us. All for a dozen turns. We never should have been there."

But those who know Ralston say that whenever adventure beckons in the wilderness, he usually cannot help himself.

Earlier this year, Ralston, who has a mechanical engineering degree from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, told the Aspen Times that he quit a budding corporate career at Intel for mountaineering.

A quotation posted on Ralston's Web site attributed to an international climber named Walter Bonatti explains why:

"Mountains are the means, the man is the end. The goal is not to reach the tops of mountains, but to improve the man."

- Information from the Associated Press, Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Denver Post, Aspen Times and Washington Post was used in this report.