Climber that hacked off his own arm with penknife

[Guest Prince]

I remember this from last year. Well, he's written a book now. Read the below to get an idea of what happened to him, although words probably cannot express how he felt.

I've read Joe Simpson's "Touching the Void", which is another survival story, and am now going to see if I can find a copy of this.

Climber who cut off trapped arm recalls ordeal

11/08/2004 - 18:48:20

A climber who escaped death by sawing off his arm which was trapped beneath a fallen rock told today how he kept a video diary of what he thought would be his last hours of life.

Aron Ralston, 28, snapped the bones in his own arm before sawing through the flesh with a penknife after spending six days trapped in a remote canyon in Utah.

Starving and dehydrated, he had even recorded his final goodbyes to his family on his video camera.

Ralston’s memoir, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, is being published in the United States and excepts were published in the latest edition of Outside magazine.

In the first scenes of his real-life thriller movie, Ralston videoed his own mangled arm.

“What you’re looking at there is my arm, going into the rock,” he says on the tape.

“And there it is – stuck. It’s been without circulation for 24 hours. It’s pretty well gone.”

On April 27 last year Ralston said farewell to his parents after already spending a night with his arm trapped under the rock.

After an unsuccessful bid to move the boulder with climbing ropes he realised he could escape if he cut off his own arm with a pocket knife.

But the blunt blade could barely break the skin, let alone saw through the bones in his arms.

Recalling the first attempt to make an incision, he recalls in the book: “The sight repulses me. I set down my knife and retch.”

He said he prayed to God for help. And then he prayed to the devil, as a raven circled overhead.

“Devil, if you’re listening, I need some help here. I’ll trade my arm, my soul, whatever you want. Just get me out of here.”

By the fifth day Ralston recorded himself as he faded.

“I’m holding on but it’s really slowing down, the time is going really slow. So again, love to everyone,” he said.

As he was about to give up, Ralston had a vision of a blond-haired three-year-old boy.

“I know the boy is my own,” he writes, envisioning a future child, and regains the strength to keep fighting.

By the sixth day he had become desperate and began thrashing, trying to yank his arm from beneath the rock.

As he was struggling he realised that he could break the two main bones in his forearm like a “two-by-four in a vice”.

“If I torque my arm far enough I can break my forearm bones,” he said.

With one yank he broke the radius bone and with another he snapped the ulna.

He picked up his knife and began to tear at the rotting flesh.

“I push the knife into my wrist, watching my skin stretch inward, until the point finally pierces and sinks to its hilt,” he writes.

“In a blaze of pain, I know the job is just starting.”

Ralston, who had been climbing alone in Blue John Canyon in Utah, stemmed the blood flow from his severed limb with a tourniquet.

After walking six miles he found a group of tourists who called for an emergency helicopter.

Edited October 13, 2004 by Prince

[DevilsJim89]

one word....wow! that takes balls to do..lol

[Da Brakes]

:ditto:

[Guest Prince]

one word....wow! that takes balls to do..lol

Perhaps, but he was going to die there anyway. Basic survival instinct.

[Jazzy Julie]

ew, im an animal nurse and i see disgusting things, but that even made me cringe.