Between a Rock and a Hard Place
In the spring of 2003, Aron Ralston did something that most of us cannot be sure we'd be able to do. Trapped by a fallen rock in a remote canyon in eastern Utah, dehydrated and not likely to be rescued, he sawed off his right forearm in order to free himself. He then hiked several miles through the canyon, rappelled down a 100-foot drop and kept going until he caught up with the search party that had been looking for him. His survival story is one of the most remarkable to come out of the wilderness in recent years, and Ralston's will to live should, it seems, be an inspiration. Instead, he has become a lightning rod for criticism and derision from his fellow outdoorsmen, and Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Ralston's account of the accident and the life that led up to it, makes clear why Ralston is an icon of controversy rather than a poster boy for strength and determination.
Ralston's family moved from Indianapolis to Colorado in 1987 when he was 12, and Aron's infatuation with the outdoors began as soon as he was within range of the Rocky Mountains. At first afraid of ski slopes, he quickly got over his fear and became a skiing enthusiast, and by his second day on skis he was hurtling down the toughest inclines at the local resort. His embrace of mountain climbing was almost as hasty; his early expeditions escalated from modest hikes with organized groups to a reckless attack on a 14,000-foot peak with a friend within just a few years.
Ralston took a break from adventure to earn a B.S. in mechanical engineering, but after a stint with Intel he fled the corporate world and moved to Aspen, where he could work for an outdoor outfitter and live the life of a ski bum, throwing wild house parties and going to Phish concerts. He continued to climb and party and climb and party, with occasional breaks for road trips into the wilderness outside of Colorado.
Ralston's autobiographical recollections brim with pride over pushing his meager experience too far and living to tell about it. He writes of a trip into Grand Teton National Park too early in the season, during which he failed to climb the mountain that was his objective and had an ill-advised encounter with a hungry bear. Then there was the time when, hiking near Lake Havasu, he leapt into the surging Colorado River and had to be saved from drowning by his more level-headed companions. Or the time when he talked two of his (now ex-) friends into skiing down a slope that was ripe for an avalanche; the resulting snowslide nearly killed one of his buddies and obviously gave Ralston a huge thrill. He writes about the events with an off-putting braggadocio; he is unsettlingly unembarrassed and unrepentant.
Although he makes a halfhearted attempt to tie his risk-taking to some existential love of nature - invoking Thoreau, ecoterrorist Edward Abbey, and the off-balance adventurer Chris McCandless (whose ill-fated story is recounted in Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild) - Ralston's true motivation is difficult to hide. His adventures are characterized not by a desire for transcendence, but by a thirst for accomplishment and notoriety. He writes again and again of wanting to be the first, the fastest, the best at a given task - the first to climb a new route, the fastest to complete a particular climb. His signature project, which remains a goal even after his accident in Utah, is to be the first to climb all 49 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, solo and in the winter. Ralston's measure of his own accomplishments is not the attainment of wisdom or revelation; his focus instead is purely numerical: altitude, speed, distance. More than anything else, he appears to want his accomplishments to be solitary. There is much more value in being the first and the only than in sharing the glory.
It is not surprising, then, that in April of 2003, Ralston set off for Utah on a solo hiking/mountain biking trip without telling anyone precisely where he was going or what he was going to be doing. He hiked alone into a narrow canyon, stepped on a precariously balanced rock and ended up being pinned under it when it fell. He spent six days in the canyon, slowly dying from lack of water. Thanks to his poor planning, no one back home even missed him for several days, and, when they did they had no idea where to look for him. His situation was dire.
Ralston explains away his predicament by citing the rock climber's warning, "Geologic time includes now." That means that even if a boulder teetering on top of a cliff will remain stationary for a thousand years, the end of that thousand-year period could be today, when you're standing under it. What Ralston fails to acknowledge is that his Utah canyon boulder would have remained stationary if he hadn't stepped on it. He is entirely responsible for his own fate.
The six days in the canyon make up the thrilling part of Ralston's story. Here, regardless of the reasons for his entrapment, his resilience truly shines. He is resourceful and resolute, and he does things that most people would be incapable of. His account of the ordeal is harrowing and riveting. But even here, Ralston's comprehension of what he went through is shallow and disconcerting. Far from being traumatized or enlightened by the experience, he seems to have been energized by it; his gruesome, step-by-step description of the self-amputation of his arm glistens with pride.
The question becomes this: Do we admire Ralston for his courage and perseverance, or do we abhor his recklessness, arrogance and unwise quest for 15 minutes of fame? It's a difficult question, given the strange dichotomy of his story, and the book does little to clear up the picture. Alternating between an account of the accident and Ralston's history, Between a Rock and a Hard Place alternately inspires and nauseates. It is messy, but that is, I guess, life.
Copyright 2004 Ad Media Inc.