Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston

Author:Aron Ralston
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Rock climbing accidents, Desert survival - Utah - Bluejohn Canyon, Bluejohn Canyon, Hiking, Ralston, Adventurers & Explorers, Travel, Desert survival, Utah, Essays & Travelogues, Sports & Recreation, General, Religion, Rock climbing accidents - Utah - Bluejohn Canyon, Inspirational, Biography & Autobiography, Mountaineering, Survival, Aron
ISBN: 9780743492829
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2005-08-30T19:59:04.843189+00:00

Eight

“I’m Goin’ to Utah”

People say that we’re searching for the meaning of life. I don’t think that’s it at all. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

—JOSEPH CAMPBELL, The Power of Myth

THROUGH THE WINTER of 2003, I kept my immediate attention on the nine 14,000-foot mountains that I was climbing, week by week adjusting my energy to a new route on another challenging peak. They were ends in themselves, a series of intrinsically rewarding journeys, but they also provided a winter-long training regimen that prepared me well physically for my big trip to Denali. I knew from the Stray Dogs expedition in 2002 that the 20,320-foot mountain would demand everything I had to successfully attempt back-to-back climbs, including the sub-twenty-four-hour solo speed attempt and ski descent. Once winter was officially over, I closed the books on another tremendous season with my fourteener project and turned my focus to backcountry skiing.

On an important trip that helped me regain some lost confidence in my avalanche awareness and hazard evaluation, I skied Mount Sopris near Carbondale in Colorado with Rick Inman, a friend and colleague from the Ute. We had a safe day skiing moderate slopes above the Thomas Lakes, steering clear of the steeper, more slide-prone slopes. It felt great to be free of my previous powder-hounding attitude that had gotten my friends and me in trouble on Resolution Mountain just a month earlier.

In late March, Gareth Roberts and I would be competing in the Elk Mountains Grand Traverse, a forty-two-mile backcountry ski touring race from Crested Butte to Aspen. To scout the route, I went out on a solo circumnavigation of Star Peak near Aspen, a twenty-five-mile ski trek. Wanting to test the equipment I would use in the race, I picked up some special waxless metal-edged backcountry skis from the Ute in the morning and got a crack-o’-noon start from the Ashcroft Ski Touring Center. I made the eighteen miles over the three passes before dark, but I crossed over Pearl Pass at nightfall and found myself stranded in a whiteout. I skied about halfway across the prime avalanche terrain of Pearl Basin, taking care to avoid a dozen starting zones and slide paths, but turned myself around in a circle. How many times would it take for me to learn that my compass wasn’t lying to me? Lost above treeline in the dark in the middle of a storm, I decided my best option was to dig a snow cave.

It took me three attempts to find a section of the snowpack that was wind-compacted and sufficiently deep to dig out a shelter at 12,000 feet. I sat in my burrow for five hours, poking my head out every twenty to thirty minutes to check for stars, mountaintops, a valley, or trees, anything that would help me navigate with my map.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.