I heard this news story this morning — and winced. From Climber Pinned by Boulder Cuts Off Arm to Live:
A mountaineer pinned by a heavy boulder in an eastern Utah desert cut off his right arm with a pocketknife after he determined that was the only way he would survive, officials said on Friday.“He’s pretty darn tough. He wanted to live. He saved himself,” Sgt. Mitch Vetere of the Emery County Sheriff’s Office in Green River, Utah, told Reuters.
Aron Ralston, 27, of Aspen, Colorado, used a pocketknife to cut off his arm below the elbow, then rappelled down a rock wall and hiked until he ran into some hikers who flagged down a rescue helicopter 60 miles south of Green River on Thursday. He had applied a tourniquet to his arm.
Vetere said Ralston would never have been spotted in the remote area where he was pinned by the boulder, which rescuers estimated at between 800 and 1,000 pounds.
Ralston was hiking into a canyon on Saturday when the boulder fell on him. He ran out of water on Tuesday and by Thursday realized he had to take the drastic action.
He was in serious condition on Friday at St. Mary’s Hospital in western Colorado, spokeswoman Kim Williams said.
A rescuer who went back to see if he could retrieve the arm said the boulder was too heavy to move, according to Vetere.
On the radio they referred to it as a 200-pound boulder…which sounded heavy, but not heavy enough that you’d have to cut your own arm off to get out from under it.