Excerpt from Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Nearer to my chest along the wall, I can't quite get my left forefinger up to where it can touch my right wrist from below. My little finger can barely slide into the space between the boulder and the wall, brushing my arm at a spot on the lateral side of the knob of my wrist. I withdraw from prodding around and look at my left wrist and estimate that it is three inches thick. My right wrist is being compressed to one sixth its normal thickness. If not for the bones, the weight of the boulder would squeeze my arm flat. Judging from the paleness of my right hand, and the fact that there's no blood loss from a traumatic injury, it's probable that I have no circulation getting to or from my trapped hand. The lack of sensation or movement probably means my nerves are damaged. Whatever injuries are present, my right hand seems to be entirely isolated from my body's circulatory, nervous, and motor-control systems. That's three-for-three on the "not good" checklist.

An inner voice explodes into expletives at the prognosis: "Shit! How did this happen? What the fuck? How the fuck did you get your hand trapped by a fucking boulder? Look at this! Your hand is crushed; it's dying, man, and there's nothing you can do about it. If you don't get blood flow back within a couple hours, it's gone."

"No, it's not. I'll get out. I mean, if I don't get out, I'm going to lose more than my hand. I have to get out!" Reason answers, but reason is not in control here; the adrenaline isn't wholly dissipated yet.

"You're stuck, fucked, and out of luck." I don't like to be pessimistic, but the devil on my left shoulder knows better than to keep up any pretenses. The little rhyming bastard is right: My outlook is bleak. But it's way too early to dwell on despair.

"No! Shut up, that's not helpful." Better to keep investigating, see what I learn. Whoever is arguing from my right shoulder makes a good point -- it's not my hand I need to worry about. There's a bigger issue. Stressing over the superficial problem will only consume my resources. Right now, I need to focus on gathering more information. With that decision made, a feeling of acceptance settles over me.

Looking up to my right, a foot above the top of the boulder on the north wall, I see tiny wads of my flesh, pieces of my arm hair, and stains of my blood streaked on the sandstone. In dragging my arm down the wall, the boulder and smooth Navajo sandstone acted like a grater, scraping off my skin's outer layers in thin strips. Peering at the bottom of my arm, I check for more blood, but there is none, not even a lone drip.

As I bring my head back up, I bump the bill of my hat, and my sunglasses fall onto my pack at my feet. Picking them up, I see they've gotten scratched at some point since I had them on in the open sunny part of the canyon an hour ago. "Not like that's important," I tell myself, but still I take care to put them on top of the boulder, off to the left side.

My headphones have gotten knocked off my ears, but now, and in my calm, I hear the crowd on the live CD cheering. The noise evaporates as the disc winds to a stop, and the sudden silence reinforces my situation. I am irreversibly trapped, standing in the dimly lit bottom of a canyon, unable to move more than a few inches up or down or side to side. Compounding my physical circumstances, no one who will suspect I am missing knows where I am. I violated the prime directive of wilderness travel in failing to leave a detailed trip plan with a responsible person. Still eight miles from my truck, I am alone in an infrequently visited place with no means to contact anyone outside the fifty-yard throw of my voice.

Alone in a situation that could very shortly prove to be fatal.

 

My watch says it's 3:28 P.M., nearly forty-five minutes since the boulder fell on my arm. I take an inventory of what I have with me, emptying my pack with my left hand, item by item. In my plastic grocery bag, beside the chocolate-bar wrappers and bakery bag with the crumbs of the chocolate muffin, I have two small bean burritos, about five hundred calories total. In the outside mesh pouch, I have my CD player, CDs, extra AA batteries, mini digital video camcorder. My multi-use tool and three-LED headlamp are also in the pouch. I sort through the electronics and pull out the knife tool and the headlamp, setting them on top of the boulder next to my sunglasses.

From Between A Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston, pages 1-30.  Copyright © 2004 by Aron Ralston.  All rights reserved, no part of this excerpt maybe reproduced without specific permission from the publisher.