Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions which some readers may find distressing.
Mountaineer Aron Ralston has shared his harrowing experience of being compelled to amputate his own arm to escape from a canyon.
In April 2003, while climbing in Bluejohn Canyon in southeastern Utah, Ralston dislodged a boulder, trapping his arm.
After being stuck for five days, having exhausted his food and water supplies and with no means to call for help, the 27-year-old Ralston faced the harrowing choice of amputating his arm to free himself.
On the sixth day, Ralston noticed that his trapped arm had started to decompose. After accidentally slicing the tip of his thumb while trying to chip away at the boulder, he had a sudden realization.
In an interview with TLC recounting his miraculous escape, Ralston explained: “It ripped part of the skin off of my thumb, kind of like the way an old blister will rip away.”
“And so that made me curious, and I started prodding around and I stuck the knife down in and at my thumb at that spot. It slid in like I was just sliding it into a pad of warm butter.”
He continued: “It went in – I couldn’t feel it of course – but it went in about a half inch and then this this hissing sound of gas, the decomposition gases releasing from inside my arm where they’d been building up, as my arm was decomposing over those five days.”
Ralston noted that hearing the alarming sound ‘threw [him] into a panic’ and went beyond merely ‘scaring’ him.
“It appalled me. It was a gruesome concept that my hand was decaying while still attached to my body and I started yanking my hand, my arm, and I was giving it everything that I had,” he continued.
As he was ‘twisting [himself] around trying to slide [his] arm up and down,’ suddenly it ‘came to’ him.
“This epiphany, that I could break the bones because my arm was caught so tightly that I could torque myself.”
Using his body weight, Ralston slammed himself against the opposite wall of the canyon, snapping both bones with the sound echoing throughout the valley.
Fortunately, the bones broke in the same spot near his wrist.
“I said to myself, here we go Aron – you’re in it now. And then, I took my knife,” he explained.
Using the knife and a handmade tourniquet, he was able to cut through the remaining nerves and muscle.
Ralston described the sensation of freeing himself as a ‘fire,’ which spread through his arm but eventually led to his escape.
He said: “I fell down and I was free…it was the happiest moment of my life. There will never be a more powerful experience for me.” He stated tearfully during the interview.
The events of that fateful April would later inspire an autobiography and the feature film, 127 Hours, starring James Franco.