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Between a Rock and a Hard Place |  |
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Between a Rock and a Hard Place | |
It started out as a simple hike in the Utah canyonlands on a warm Saturday afternoon. For Aron Ralston, a twenty-seven-year-old mountaineer and outdoorsman, a walk into the remote Blue John Canyon was a chance to get a break from a winter of solo climbing Colorado's highest and toughest peaks. He'd earned this weekend vacation, and though he met two charming women along the way, by early afternoon he finally found himself in his element: alone, with just the beauty of the natural world all around him.
It was 2:41 P.M. Eight miles from his truck, in a deep and narrow slot canyon, Aron was climbing down off a wedged boulder when the rock suddenly, and terrifyingly, came loose. Before he could get out of the way, the falling stone pinned his right hand and wrist against the canyon wall.
And so began six days of hell for Aron Ralston. With scant water and little food, no jacket for the painfully cold nights, and the terrible knowledge that he'd told no one where he was headed, he found himself facing a lingering death -- trapped by an 800-pound boulder 100 feet down in the bottom of a canyon. As he eliminated his escape options one by one through the days, Aron faced the full horror of his predicament: By the time any possible search and rescue effort would begin, he'd most probably have died of dehydration, if a flash flood didn't drown him before that.
What does one do in the face of almost certain death? Using the video camera from his pack, Aron began recording his grateful good-byes to his family and friends all over the country, thinking back over a life filled with adventure, and documenting a last will and testament with the hope that someone would find it. (For their part, his family and friends had instigated a major search for Aron, the amazing details of which are also documented here for the first time.) The knowledge of their love kept Aron Ralston alive, until a divine inspiration on Thursday morning solved the riddle of the boulder. Aron then committed the most extreme act imaginable to save himself.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place -- a brilliantly written, funny, honest, inspiring, and downright astonishing report from the line where death meets life -- will surely take its place in the annals of classic adventure stories.
作者简介 Aron Ralston grew up in the Midwest before moving to Colorado when he was twelve, a place where he became an avid outdoorsman. In 2002, he gave up a career as a mechanical engineer in New Mexico and moved to Aspen, Colorado, where among other things he continued his attempt to climb the fifty-nine Colorado peaks of more than 14,000 feet solo in winter (he's more than three-quarters through). Since his accident, he has resumed his life of adventure and discovery. This is his first book.
编辑推荐 From Publishers Weekly
In a moving account of strength in the face of adversity, Ralston presents the full story behind the 2003 event that became worldwide news: his self-amputation of his right arm after it was caught between a boulder and a canyon wall during what began as a routine day hike in the Utah Canyons. An experienced climber, Ralston, 28, effectively shows he wasn't a risk-taker, and alternates between describing how his jaunt turned into a nightmare when a huge stone suddenly came unstuck as he used it to climb down a ledge, and recalling early experiences that changed his novice attitudes toward hiking, which he admits "were not intrinsically safe." Ralston candidly renders the details of six days of entrapment, using transcribed monologues from videotapes he made while trapped, including his increasingly exhausted thoughts as well as poignant farewells to his family. But his best writing details his self-amputation and his subsequent march to safety, in which he rappelled one-armed down a hill and then hiked six miles before someone found him. Ralston's prose is never gruesome, nor is it used to shock, even as he describes first breaking his forearm, and then slipping "into some sort of autopilot" as he cuts through muscle fibers to detach the arm. It's truly thrilling when he finishes and is free: "A crystalline moment shatters and the world is a different place." 16 pages of color photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School - From midday Saturday, April 26, 2003, until midday Thursday, May 1, Ralston was pinned between a boulder and a canyon wall in a remote area of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. He had little food and water. No one would even wonder where he was until he didn't show up for work on Tuesday. Unable to sit, lie down, use his right arm (that was the part between the rock and the wall), or sleep, he knew right away that he was in for an excruciatingly difficult time. Those 120 hours of what he calls "uninterrupted experience" tested to the fullest his physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual being. His eventual rescue led to international headlines, partially due to his dramatic means of escape: he severed his arm with a cheap, dull, dirty knife. This is a searing and amazingly detailed rendition of his ordeal, along with accounts of several of Ralston's previous wilderness adventures. He is one active and tough guy, but readers never get the sense that he is boastful or seeking notoriety. Rather, he seems genuinely intrigued, even mildly befuddled, by his insatiable drive to be active in the wild. One could say he takes too many risks, and that he has a tendency toward carelessness. He himself notes this. But the man's drive and devotion to his calling are nothing but admirable. Sixteen pages of color photographs add considerably to readers' experience of this nuanced, gripping survival story that belongs in most collections. - Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From The Washington Post
Could you cut off your own arm if it were the only way to save yourself? Aron Ralston made headlines by doing just that. This account of how he was trapped in an isolated Utah canyon for six days, and how he methodically went about extricating himself, is more than just another tale about those who head into the wilderness seeking their bliss and get lost.
A former Intel engineer, Ralston identifies with Chris McCandless, the introspective seeker of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, which raised true adventure to a new level -- and to the bestseller charts. But McCandless was a loner and hobo who abandoned his possessions, burned his money and died of starvation in Alaska while acting out what Krakauer believed was a complicated rebellion against his father. By contrast, Ralston initially comes across as a cocky adrenaline junkie, loving son and punctual employee who nevertheless courts danger.
Born in 1975, Ralston was scared of snow when his parents first moved from Indiana to Colorado. But he adapted spectacularly. While still in his teens he was skiing, climbing, rafting and planning to climb in winter all 59 of Colorado's Fourteeners -- peaks over 14,000 feet high. He graduated from college with a double major in mechanical engineering and French, as well as a minor in piano performance, although strangely he says nothing of his musical ability or the accident's effect on it.
His resumé was filled with close encounters. A bear stalked him in Grand Teton National Park. He nearly drowned in the Grand Canyon. He was trapped high on a mountain in a snowstorm. While he was back-country skiing, his "cavalier attitude" led him to choose a route that triggered an avalanche. It nearly buried him and two friends -- both of whom, he admits, have refused to talk to him since.
"Rather than regret those choices," he writes, "I swore to myself that I would learn from their consequences. Most simply, I came to understand that my attitudes were not intrinsically safe." As we know now, he didn't learn. It is as exasperating to read his confessions of hotdogging and recklessness as it is inspiring to see how logical he was once he got stuck.
His fateful weekend begins with climbing a major peak in Colorado, then speeding off in his jeep to mountain bike to a remote trailhead for what he expects will be a fun day of slithering through sandstone labyrinths, his headphones blaring Phish music. He takes almost no food and very little water. Nor does he tell anyone where he is headed. Then he accidentally jiggles loose an enormous rock that wedges his arm against a canyon wall. Realizing quickly that he might be facing death, he videotapes heartfelt goodbyes, including instructions on how to locate his IRA portfolio.
Warding off morbid thoughts, he launches ingenious self-rescue maneuvers. He tries chipping away pieces of the boulder. When that doesn't work, he rigs a pulley system in a futile effort to move it. As he describes, in excruciating detail, hour upon harrowing hour of dehydration and then delirium, we learn that he actually tried sawing off his limb early on, but failed. The moment that he figures out he must break the bones in his arm first so he can cut through soft tissue sounds horrible, yet Ralston feels triumphant.
If Aron Ralston had been just an accident waiting to happen, why should we care about him? First, because there are thousands of potential victims like him. Colorado officials estimate that a half-million people climbed at least one Fourteener last year. Adrenaline fever is contagious; on occasion it is deadly. Heedless wilderness tourists routinely wander off without so much as a water bottle. And anyone who has hiked solo has probably taken a wrong turn or a scary fall. Has it ever dawned on us what the consequences might be should we break a leg or get caught in a flash flood?
We also care because Ralston writes very well. His thoughts ricochet from anger to anguish to acceptance. He recounts the joy of risk, and he takes full responsibility: "The boulder did what it was there to do. Boulders fall. . . . You did this, Aron. . . . You chose . . . to do this descent into the slot canyon by yourself. . . . You created this accident. . . . You have been heading for this situation for a long time." His recital even takes on a weird humor as he notes that his self-amputation is more successful than his botched dissection of a sheep's eyeball in a ninth-grade science class.
Once he frees himself, the story accelerates into a riveting drama as he rappels one-handed down a cliff and staggers through rough terrain for miles, blood leaking through his tourniquet as he tries to find help. Aron Ralston went to Utah as just another rock jock; he emerges as a Gen X action hero.
Reviewed by Grace Lichtenstein
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* The world knows the outlines of Ralston's extraordinary story: with precious little water or food, his right arm pinned for nearly five days by a boulder in a narrow canyon shaft in central-eastern Utah, Ralston amputated the arm with his pocketknife, then rappelled and hiked his way to his own rescue. What makes his account of his ordeal extraordinary, too, is the detail and precision Ralston, a former mechanical engineer, brings to the telling, from the almost minute-by-minute chronology of his ordeal to topographical descriptions of the ground he's covered in his life as an outdoor adventurer. It's also the extremes of failure and achievement we see forged in this life-or-death crisis: carelessness at not telling friends where he was going, despair as he wrote his epitaph on the canyon wall, even a certain unthinking in taking five days to figure out his deliverance. But those were all trumped by Ralston's amazing resourcefulness in prolonging his supplies and finding a way out, his boundless enthusiasm for life, and his dogged force of will at enduring far longer than anyone could have expected. Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
This is a remarkable tale of a man's inventive will to live and in its recounting will hold you captive in its pages just as the author, Aron Ralston, was imprisoned by a falling rock that pinned his right arm and wrist to a canyon wall. Hiking a remote back-country canyon of Utah, Aron found himself in a riddle of existence, survival and death. Every aspect of his life as a 27-year-old outdoorsman and adventurer seemed to lead to this moment, as if this is what he was looking for. With all possible options of escape exhausted, his water depleted and rescue unlikely, 'slipping away' seemed the only conclusion. With nothing to do but survive hour by hour and contemplate, Aron found the answer to his riddle in front of his nose. His vice was also his salvage. It is an intriguing story of self-examination, honest and revealing, without fear of exposing the short-comings of his human spirit. (Kirkus UK) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"A moving account of strength in the face of adversity."
-- Publishers Weekly (Publisher's Weekly ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
