Day Three: “Push on till the Day”
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
– HORACE
WHERE HAVE ALL THESE mosquitoes come from? I wait out two of them and return their spirits to the cosmos when they alight on my right forearm. Up until a half hour ago, I hadn’t seen a single insect all day, and now a half-dozen bloodsuckers buzz around my head. Sitting in my harness, suspended from the anchor I built this morning above the chockstone, I execute them one by one until they are all gone. Bizarrely, it occurs to me that I could eat the flattened mosquitoes. It’s a ridiculous and unnecessary thought: The bugs couldn’t possibly sustain me, and besides, I still have most of two premade burritos. That’s a good five hundred calories, and much more appetizing than dead insects.
Must be the sleep deprivation. It’s making you dumb.
Yet another breeze brushes past me on its way to the Big Drop, stripping me of what little warmth I have. Later in the afternoon like this-or early in the evening, I guess-the winds come more frequently, and a crispness anticipates the arrival of night.
My gumption for chipping at the boulder is gone. I continue with the fruitless effort solely to stimulate my metabolism and push into the background the shuddering weakness brought on by the chilly winds. Even still, I work only a fraction as much as I did yesterday. I’ve already acknowledged the inutility of hacking at the chockstone, but some irrational part of my brain hasn’t yet acquiesced to the helplessness of my situation. It insists that if I work harder and take fewer breaks, I will eventually get free. I rationalize my lethargy with the impossible thought that I don’t want to get free with night approaching-I could stumble right off the Big Drop rappel in the dark, or get lost in the lower canyon.
Like you’re going to get free. You’re lazy and you know it. You’re in the fight of your life-a fight for your life, no less-and you’re too lazy to get over a little fatigue and do some work. You slothful waste. You’re killing yourself here. You’re going to die.
There it is, my prognosis in black and white, like an X ray held to the light. I have a terminal condition. Without being able to meet the needs of my body, I can expect to live another day and a half, perhaps. Or two days, but what would that matter? No expectation had prepared me for this tormenting anxiety of a slow death, thinking about whether it will come tonight in the cold, tomorrow in the cramps of dehydration, or the next day in heart failure. This hour, the next, the one after that. Anytime I’d come close to death before, it had been in the context of a flashing crisis, a dramatic vision. Whether the circumstance was experienced or envisioned, the chop came as an executioner’s blade, fast as gravity in the form of a falling ice block, a smothering avalanche, a failed self-arrest, a peeling backflip from high on a rock face. I knew my last sounds wouldn’t be any profound passing of wisdom but a muttered “Oh shit,” maybe the thought “This is it,” and a crushing exhale, a spattering of blood, crunching bones. I’d never imagined fading in a protracted departure. I figured I could handle just about anything that would provoke a drawn-out struggle: fighting through a storm; finding my way when I was lost; dragging my body back from injury or illness. No, I wouldn’t sit down to dinner with death, talk introspectively over a lengthy visit, and end on “Well, that’s it, then, guess it’s time to go.”
I had been lucky so many times that even the glimpses of my final destiny had become a toy I played with to bring on a certain intense feeling, the ultimate contrast between the fear of immediate doom and the desire to live fully. I think some people would consider these the thoughts of an adrenaline junkie, but I relished more the control of my adrenaline than the ride it would give me if I unleashed it. On less dangerous but still adventurous trips, I pushed my limits for endurance, engaging in prolonged experiences of cathartic suffering to break down my interior walls, to cleanse my spirit for purer emotions than boredom and stress, and to surpass myself. Periodically, I would have a euphoric realization taking me beyond the filters of my brain, in which I understood that the fear and the pain existed only in the gap between a pair of neurons. I called it getting over myself. How I will get over myself now, in this canyon, is beyond any perceived powers of mind over matter I think I have-my situation is physically impossible to overcome. I am over the pain, I have the discipline to survive the fear, but I can’t get over my body’s need for water.
Water. I pick up my charcoal-gray Nalgene bottle and swirl the precious contents. For the last day, I’ve been sipping about two ounces every three hours. Hmmm. That means the ten ounces I have left will get me through tonight. I need it to last longer than that. It’s after six P.M., but I haven’t had any water since I put away my video camera at three-fifteen. I should skip it this time, save it for later. I feel all right, I guess. My tongue isn’t unusually swollen or squishy or hard. My lips feel normal, too. I’m thinking about water fairly frequently, but maybe this stage of dehydration is like that part of fasting when I’ve thought I would die if I didn’t eat soon, but after another half a day, the disrupting fantasies of food ceased and my hunger dissipated. Somehow I doubt thirst is like that. I bet this is just the beginning.
Whatever. Quit thinking about it; put the Nalgene away somewhere. Stick it in the sand so you’re not staring at how much you have left. Better yet, do something. Get yourself ready for night.
Yes, it’s better to focus on my plan. I put my Nalgene below the chockstone in the sand and consider the coming evening. It will be pitch-black at nine P.M., and then there will be nine hours of darkness. I know it’s only nine hours, but especially when I’m not producing internal heat, it will last like a polar winter. I’ll sip at nine, midnight, three, and six A.M. I’ll take smaller sips than last night; that will conserve more for tomorrow. I’ll need it to eat the rest of my burritos. That first bite three hours ago was so dry it turned to pasty glue in my mouth; the rest will only be worse. OK, then, that’s what I’ll do.
That leaves me with the question of how I’ll stay warm. The air seems colder than it was this time yesterday. There were a few more layers of clouds passing by today, keeping the temperature lower. But now the clouds are gone, and there’s nothing to insulate me once the sun goes down. One of the few laws of heat transfer I recall from engineering classes is that radiation, or emissive heat loss, between a ground source and the night sky is proportional to the temperature difference raised to the fourth power. If I remember correctly, space is about 400 degrees Kelvin colder than my body. Take that to the fourth power, multiply it by a little constant I’ve forgotten, and that’s still like twenty-five billion units of whatever. The bottom line is, I’m emitting a lot of heat into the sky. I’ll need to do a better job of keeping myself warm tonight, especially since I won’t be working as much. I’m just going to make it through to the morning and then worry about what’s next.
Taking off my pack, I fish out the small black cloth sack in which I stowed my digital camera. Holding the sack’s open end in my teeth, I take my knife in my left hand and punch out the stitched end of the bag, trying to keep from stabbing myself in the face. The lightweight material tears easily, and I thrust my left forearm into the fabric tube. Tugging with my teeth, I pull the closer end of the sack up over my elbow, creating a makeshift long sleeve for my left arm. I dismantle the runners from their spot in my pulley station and retie two more lengths of purple webbing around my right arm, pulling the strands between my forearm and the wall where I can’t situate the insulated CamelBak. Also from my anchor system, I take in my teeth the extra length of yellow webbing and, applying tension against the tied-off loop, slice off a five-foot strand with my knife. I put the remaining two thirds of my first burrito in my left pocket, drop the unopened whole one into the bottom of my backpack, and wrap my right biceps in the plastic grocery sack that I was using to store my food. I tie off the plastic bag with the yellow webbing and have a long sleeve for my right arm, too.
Now to do the same for my lower half and somehow make pant legs out of the remaining 170 feet of my climbing rope. The dirty green and yellow line lies in a heap on the rock shelf in front of my knees. It takes me twenty minutes for each leg, but I manage to wrap them both from my thighs to my socks with about thirty neat loops of rope. I laugh at myself. The ropes stack like coils of potting clay; it looks like I’ve been attacked by two identical half-inch-thick green pythons. The coils gather and pinch at my knees when I sit in my harness, so I loosen them and make an adjustment on the daisy chain fixing me to the anchor, lifting me two inches higher in my seat. This is the most comfortable I’ve been since I was trapped.
With the ropes wrapped around my calves, I can lean in to the rock shelf in front of my shins-the one I was afraid I would trip over backward if I’d tried to move out of the way of the falling chockstone. Even if I had fallen, I would’ve been better off with a tib-fib fracture. Did I think about that, or was I worried about my head? It happened so fast, but it happened so slowly, too. How much time had I really had to react? There had been a lot to consider in that fraction of a second when I made my decision to push against the falling rock. Why did I do that? Maybe I thought I could steer the chockstone away from my head, like I had done with a similar-sized boulder on the Crestone Needle.
That time I certainly had no choice. If I hadn’t redirected the boulder, it would have crushed my chest, and I would have plummeted from 14,000 feet in free fall. I had been making a traverse on the ridge between Crestone Peak and the Needle in the spring of 2000, after soloing the Northwest Couloir on Crestone Peak with hiking poles and sans crampons. I was in a ballsy mood, and instead of taking the documented and cairned route of least resistance on the traverse, I made up my own variation of adventure along which I found myself covering a considerable stretch of ground on the north side of the summit-to-summit ridge. The normal route never crosses onto the north side, and for good reason: Twice I was on-sight soloing broken and loose fifth-class rock in my mountaineering boots. I felt every inch of the three thousand feet from my position down to the Upper South Colony Lake. Cliffed out by the Black Gendarme in front of me, I knew I had to find my way over the ridge crest to the south side and easier ground. Fifty feet above me, a short and steep gully of loose rockfall debris ended in a ten-foot-high roof. It over-hung a little, but the gully was only three feet wide at its head, so I figured I could stem up to the roof, chimneying myself higher until I could pull over it, probably putting myself right onto the knobby conglomerate staircase where I would finish the traverse to the Needle’s summit.
Except it hadn’t happened like that. I had been four feet off the rubble in the fifty-degree gully when I yarded on the overhang and the whole roof dislodged. A thick piece of slab came unwedged from between the two towers that formed the narrow chimney. Shit! I hugged the boulder to my chest, and we fell backward as a single object until my torso twisted to the left in midair. My back hit the right-hand wall, and the boulder momentarily compressed my chest, forcing out a puff of breath. As I slid down to land in the steep scree, I shoved at the falling boulder, deflecting it away from my upper body and down into the gully just past my feet. With the wind knocked out of me, I collapsed forward, and my hands caught on the opposite wall, with my head slumped downhill. I saw the boulder bounce twice in the scree, then catapult over the lower lip of the ravine in a half-mile-long shower of crushed stone and pebbles. If my back hadn’t hit the wall and kept me upright, allowing me to redirect the boulder, I would have taken a tandem ride with it. I recovered my breath but not my confidence and found myself reversing the gully to an easier crossover to the south side of the Needle.
A half hour later, within thirty vertical feet of the summit, I backed off an easy move. My head couldn’t let go of the near-miss accident. I didn’t even bother to switch into my rock-climbing shoes and try the final move a second time. I’d had it. I bailed off the traverse, making a heinous descent across the south face of the Needle, maneuvering down a series of four jagged rock ribs and intermediary ravines laced with rappel slings, evidence that I wasn’t the first to flee from the finish to the traverse. Until my feet hit level ground at 13,100 feet, I was consumed with desperation and a wish that I had the luxury of rappelling. Back at my vehicle, I plugged my favorite Pink Floyd CD into the truck stereo and repeatedly listened to “Fearless.” I sang along, the opening lines engraving themselves in my psyche: “They say that hill’s too steep to climb. Climb it.” Crestone Needle had beaten me down, but inspired by the music, I went back up the next morning and tagged the summit, peering down to my high point of the day before, just a few yards from the top. I learned what a fragile thing is confidence, how thin a strand it is that tethers my body to my mind through unlikely situations. What I didn’t learn was that it might not always be the best plan to redirect a charging boulder with my hands.
A subtle stirring in my core tells me it’s time to pray. I haven’t done that yet, but I’m ready now. I close my left hand in a loose fist resting on the chockstone, shut my eyes, and lower my forehead onto my hand.
“God, I am praying to you for guidance. I’m trapped here in Blue John Canyon-you probably know that-and I don’t know what I am supposed to do. I’ve tried everything I can think of. I need some new ideas. Or if I need to try something again, lifting the boulder, amputating my arm, please show me a sign.”
Waiting a minute, with my head still lowered, I slowly tilt my head back until I’m looking up through the pale twilight, beseeching the sky itself to advise me. I surprise myself by half expecting a visual cue to lead me through my dilemma. I catch myself scanning the rock walls, looking for some supernaturally scribed hieroglyphics. Of course, there is nothing, no metaphysical counsel, no divine reply manifesting itself in the sandstone. What had I wanted? A swirl in the clouds that would tell me the time and day help would arrive? A petroglyph showing a man with a knife? In a twisted and tired effort to disguise my disappointment, I start my prayer again, sarcasm soaking each word.
“OK, then, God, since you’re apparently busy…Devil, if you’re listening, I need some help here. I’ll trade you my arm, my soul, whatever you want. Just get me out of here. You want me never to climb again, I can give that up. Just show me the dotted line.”
I stop and sigh. While there’s not anything really funny about my joke, I’m glad I haven’t stopped trying to amuse myself yet.
I think that maybe this is a test, a lesson. Perhaps once I figure out the lesson, then I’ll get free. Is that it? What am I supposed to get from this? What am I supposed to learn?
I think about a lesson my Aspen friend Rob Cooper and I have talked about a few times. Rob isn’t a guy of many words when it comes to philosophy, but he’s often proved his deeper side in a single targeted remark. Typically, our conversation patterns would start with me telling Rob about a recent adventure, and out of the blue, he would reply with his favorite non sequitur: “It’s not what you do, Aron, it’s who you are.” Derailed from my story, I would spend the next ten minutes questioning Rob as to exactly what he meant by that. He’d repeat the axiom, and in the end, still not understanding, I would attempt to refute him. In my view, we define who we are precisely by what we do. We find our identity in action. If we do nothing, we are nothing. Our bodies even take on a look that is largely the result of our lifestyle. I never grasped what Rob was getting at. No matter how long I argued my side of the point, I never convinced him, either.
Perhaps my skewed perspective from the depth of this canyon gives me the oblique angle I need to reconsider Rob’s comment. In thinking about what he has said, I have a breakthrough: Rob was sensing in the accounts of my adventures an unspoken request for his approval. More a reassurance than a challenge, his reply told me that it didn’t matter to him what I had done or achieved. He deemed me a friend because of who I am-as a person, not as a climber, a skier, an outdoorsman. My confusion at his assertion had shown how right he was. I got defensive because I wanted him to respect me for my accomplishments. I had fallen prey to the mentality that places sole value on achievement while overlooking the process of achieving. Rob, along with everyone else I cared about in my life, would either respect me for who I am-as in how I treat others-or they wouldn’t. My risk-taking didn’t affect my integrity as a friend. Huh. I think I get it now. Maybe that’s what I’m here to learn?
Well, if that was it, Aron, then the chockstone should split in two and fall harmlessly to the sand right…about…now.
Predictably, nothing happens. For another thirty seconds, nothing continues to happen, and I quit waiting. Maybe that small epiphany was an emotional table scrap, something to ease my tired conscience. I know I’m not trapped here waiting for enlightenment-I’m trapped here because there’s a huge boulder sitting on my hand. How big is this thing, anyway? It’s heavier than I am, but I made it move a little yesterday when I was trying to lift it. I doubt it weighs much more than a couple hundred pounds, or there’s no way I could’ve budged it at all. With a 6:1 mechanical advantage system multiplying most of my body’s weight standing in the haul-line foot loops, I should be able to dislodge the chockstone even if I lose half the lifting force back to friction. It’s too late in the evening to start reconfiguring the pulley system. I’m using most of the critical pieces of webbing as limb warmers, and I don’t want to give up even their slight insulation.
Night erupts from the canyon and fills the sky. Closing my eyes, I make a wish and give a visual voice to my deepest desire. I see myself catching a lift on the incessant wind, riding the tidal wave of darkness out of here, letting it carry me like a raven over the desert scrub straight up to the void. I soar over the barren buttes, maroon tablelands, and buckled mantle of central Utah, heading west over the frigid black Great Basin and Sierra Nevada Mountains devoid of city lights, the land performing a magician’s trick of spectral transformation as I repeal the sunset and catch the day again somewhere over the Pacific Coast.
When my struggle feels most difficult, time swells, my agony expanding with it exponentially. I age faster, especially at night, when I lose the visual cues of time’s actual progression. Three minutes of tormented shivering consume ten minutes of perceived experience, like I’ve fallen into a wormhole where I endure excruciating maltreatment for immeasurable eons only to return to normal consciousness. But I have found an antidote to this misery: In the hazy freedom of my imagination, I dip and weave in the whispering clouds over the sea, whitecaps changing to swells as I head still farther west. I fly higher through the atmosphere, glancing back to watch the land turn into a green frame around the cobalt ocean, islands shrinking to pinpoints. Slicing up through icy swirls of crystallized water vapor, I spiral into the vast gulf of space, jettisoning my body in a final act of evolution, metamorphosing into a splash of colored light, an iridescent cluster of hovering photons.
A bout of shivering shuts down my fantasy, the dancing particles of light dissolving to black, and I open my eyes. My mind journey felt short, but checking my watch, I see that it’s nine-forty-five P.M. It was after nine when I noticed that it was dark enough to see stars. The same brilliant constellations I saw last night appear again in the narrow gap between the fissure’s walls. There are two that stand out from the others, like a pair of interlaced horseshoes. I wonder if one of them is the curved stinger of Scorpio, the Zodiac sign of my birthday, October 27. Regardless of their names, the unsympathetic stars are a somber reminder that there are no lights to pollute the view. I am so far removed from civilization that I might as well be on the moon.
“Ungg-gggu-ggga-gggngh.” My throat gives forth a series of unintelligible sounds as my teeth chatter, clacking spastically like a woodpecker’s drill.
Trying to capture what warmth I can from the continuing shudders, I rearrange my ad hoc clothing. The top coils of my climbing rope have loosened, exposing my thighs to the cold. I cinch the wraps tighter and weave the upper end around the highest five strands, hoping that will hold the coils above my knees. I experiment with using my rope bag like a miniature bivy sack, putting my left hand and arm inside the unzipped fabric tube, then tucking my head inside the flap. The tight confines of the bag force my head forward onto my wrist, which is marginally more comfortable if I set my left hand on my right biceps, near the shoulder. Sitting in my harness with my left hip against the canyon wall, I’m stable enough that I can lean to the right, resting my head on my left hand at my right elbow, and relax my upper body. It’s as if I’m putting my head down for a desk nap in elementary school.
I have produced enough warmth that I can sit in my harness inactive for almost fifteen minutes before the shivers come back. As my body quivers, the ropes loosen around my legs, and I gradually submit to fidgeting with my meager coverings for another half hour. Using my headlamp, I fuss over the ropes, fool around with the webbing looped around my right arm, adjust the punched-out camera sack on my left arm, squirm around in my harness to stimulate the circulation in my legs, and finally tuck my arm and head back into the rope bag, reassuming the position, as I have come to think of it. Another fifteen minutes of blessed idleness and then more shivers. A pattern emerges. I fidget for a half hour, raising my metabolic output enough that I can ease back in my harness for fifteen minutes. But always the cold wins, and convulsions rip through me, my jaw clenching in uncontrollable spasms until I think I’m going to shatter my teeth.
After the fourth cycle of action and repose, it’s midnight, time for my designated sip of water. The hours went by quickly. Not as fast as last night, but I’m conserving my calories more than I did last night. I pick up the Nalgene from its spot in the sand and curse myself for tightening the lid too much-I can’t unscrew it. Squeezing the bottle between my legs, I manage to get the lid open and bring it to my lips, tilting it just enough that a half ounce of cool water splashes onto my tongue. I crave more. The sip initiates a chain reaction of escalating thirst that culminates in a half-crazed desire to drink the entire cup of remaining fluid.
Don’t you do it, Aron.
Commanding my hand to reseal the Nalgene, I recognize that I am managing to control my reactions and fight my raw instincts with a rational strategy for long-term preservation. Sometime, in the next twenty-four hours, most likely, I will run out of water. I wonder what my discipline will have me do then. Will I continue my ritual of opening the Nalgene, trying to eke the last molecule from the hard plastic bottle? I envision my tongue dryly searching the rim of the long-empty bottle, scraping over the Lexan in a deranged hope.
Returning to the pattern of fidgeting and rest, I mentally pace myself for the next six hours. Eight more cycles of adjusting the ropes and coverings, interspersed with ten- or fifteen-minute periods of stasis, and dawn will be here. I can’t sleep, but sitting still helps me focus my energy. I avoid thinking about rescue or any of my self-rescue options. Most of the time, I stare at my breath, condensing on the inside of the waterproof rope bag. For some reason, it’s more comforting to leave my headlamp on for a few minutes each time I tuck my head into the bag; I think it helps stave off claustrophobia. The bag is a bit bigger than a plastic grocery sack, the kind you’re not supposed to let children play with. It’s counterintuitive to put my head inside it, but it makes a noticeable improvement in reducing my heat emission to the night sky. Once I’m accustomed to the black-plastic-coated interior, I turn off my headlamp and listen to my breathing, feel the moisture building up inside the bag, and relax as best I can in the position, waiting for light.
It’s colder now. My watch thermometer registers 53 degrees F-chilly, but I’m sustaining myself all right. As maddening as it is for my body to launch into another round of quaking tremors, I’m reassured that my involuntary reflexes are still functioning well. They could as easily have ceased to perform due to the stress and trauma of my accident. How lucky I am that the boulder didn’t cause any significant blood loss. I would have gone into hypovolemic shock, my heart trying to pump an insufficient volume of blood through my body’s piping. It is a meaningless reprieve. There will come a time when my body’s metabolic processes no longer behave according to their operating codes, and then shapeless death will bear me away.
I decide to chip at the rock to help generate better warmth, since there’s not enough work involved in adjusting my leggings. Hacking at the boulder also keeps my mind busy, though I’m no longer trying to make headway. I know the boulder will continue to settle on my arm as I remove more material from it. The area where I chipped the flakes off yesterday has already rotated down onto my right arm, eclipsing the entire night’s progress. But in five minutes, I am warm and lay my multi-tool back on top of the chockstone, pull my rope bag over my head, and sit back once more. In each of the next five cycles, I include a token effort of tapping my knife blade, and sometimes the file blade, into the lopsided stone.
The sky gradually changes from black to white. My ordered regimen of fidgeting and rest has brought me through another night, though I am not thankful for the wearisome repetition of my survival. I thrive on stimulation and action, and aside from the litany of physical duress, my entrapment has brought the additional psychological curse of being unable to fully occupy my mind. I feel engaged at moments, even an hour at a time, but I can’t help dwelling on the monotony of this motionlessness. If dehydration and hypothermia don’t take me in the next couple of days, boredom may well dull my instincts and quash my will to live. A question haunts me: How weary will I get before suicide seems the only excitement that could relieve the ennui?
It is a colorless sunrise, too bright for stars to peek through the light. The ghost-white sky puzzles me; I can’t tell if I’m still staring into the now pale heavens or peering up at a sheet of clouds. Clouds at night would be good-they help block the radiation losses that make surfaces much colder than the air temperature. But clouds during the day are less desirable. They’ll keep the desert from warming up, and there’s always the chance that if they bring rain, the canyon will flood, game over. Another hour passes, and the day resolves to a cloudless azure blue.
Rather than waiting for the canyon to warm up, I start the process of rerigging my boulder-lifting system. I remove the webbing from my arm. I got myself sweaty yesterday trying to lift the boulder, and I figure my exertion will warm me up. Based on my SAR training, I’ve envisioned an arrangement of carabiners and Prusik loops that should give me a 6:1 power ratio. Before I can attach all the loops and ’biners, I have to shorten the anchor webbing about six inches, to create more space between the chockstone and the rap ring for the expanded lifting system. I tie a series of overhand knots in the webbing above the rap ring, using up material and effectively tightening the anchor loop. As the anchor rises higher and becomes more difficult to reach, I smear the soles of my running shoes against the canyon walls, gaining almost two feet of height, but at the cost of a painful strain on my right wrist.
I remember to install a progress-capture loop from the anchor to the main line this time, so that if I am successful in raising the boulder even a few inches, I can seize the main line with the Prusik and reset the rest of the system to haul again. With a 6:1 system ratio, for every twelve inches that I successfully pull the haul line, I’ll get two inches of lift on the boulder. Since my system is stuffed into a cramped three-foot space between the anchor loop and the chockstone, I have only about a one-foot haul run until the system cinches up on itself. I need to lift the boulder six to eight inches to free the upper part of my palm, requiring at least three resets on the system. I’ve already decided that if one or more of my fingers are still stuck, once I get my palm free, I will do what it takes to liberate my hand, ripping off the remaining pinched digits if necessary.
With the system in place, I hoist myself up the rope until I can step into the foot loops. I notice the added spice of excitement in this attempt, and a hope comes that I will soon be free. But as I weight the haul loops and the rope stretches and the Prusiks grab the main line, there is no effect on the boulder. Emotionally let down but not despairing, I examine the system, adjust the Prusiks, and consider whether I should shorten the anchor webbing again. Because of the rope stretch, I need more space for the system to grow before it will pull on the boulder. I add two more knots above the rap ring. Trying again, I watch the system tighten, but still not even a scrape or a rumble from the boulder. There is no sharp attack of pain in my wrist that would certainly attend any significant movement of the chockstone. Dammit, what’s going on here? I bounce in the foot loops, pulling back on the haul line with my left hand at the same time. The rope is taut in my grasp; I’m exerting as much force as I can. But as I follow the rope through the bends at the carabiners with my fingers, I feel it slacken at every turn. With my weight fully set on the system, I pluck the main line just above the boulder and realize the problem: There is no tension in the rope. It’s as loose as if I had completely let up on the haul. Friction between the rope and the carabiners is dissipating every bit of force that I can apply. There are too many bends, too many losses. Maybe with pulleys I would have a chance, but not like this.
Now the disappointment settles over me. After I’d already acquiesced to the inutility of further attempts at self-extrication yesterday, and resolved to wait for rescue, raising my hopes only to annihilate them a second time leaves me utterly dejected. My shoulders slump as I step out of the haul loops, and I tear down the haul system so I can sit in my harness and rest. I sigh disconsolately over and over again, fighting with every reserve I can to keep from crying. I am on the brink of total abdication.
I pull myself out of this wretched state by imagining my friends in Aspen getting up and going to work this morning, my housemates preparing for our roommate Leona’s goodbye party. By this time tomorrow, they will know positively that something is wrong, and the search will begin. My nearly extinguished hope for salvation flickers again. I’m no worse off than I was yesterday; I’m back to waiting.
Each time I look at my watch and see it near the top of the hour, I calculate how long I’ve been stuck, counting down to the significant milestones. One of the effects of the sleep deprivation is that I’m unable to hold the last hour’s tallies in my head, and I constantly have to start over with the math. It’s seven A.M., and I have been trapped for forty hours. Forty hours without sleep, forty hours without adequate food and water, forty hours of shivering, forty hours of stress, fatigue, and agony. Exactly two days ago, I woke up in the back of my truck, where I’d slept on Friday night, and cooked some oatmeal before getting my canyoneering and biking supplies ready for the itinerary I had planned.
My thirst selectively drives my memory to focus on the five-gallon water jug bought in Moab, sitting three quarters full in the bed of my pickup. I think about the two one-liter bottles of Gatorade I bought at a convenience store late Friday night in Green River. They’re spread across the floor of the passenger seat, along with some grapefruits, oranges, muffins, burritos, and snack bars that were shaken out of their plastic bags from all the bouncing and swerving on the dirt road. I hold in my mind the image of the grapefruits on the floor mat, fantasizing their juiciness. I had bought them specifically to eat after my Blue John/Horseshoe circuit, anticipating the intensifying effect a long day’s journey would have on their succulence. My tongue smacks across my palate, yearning for refreshment. Before my longing can get the better of me, causing me to guzzle my six ounces of water, I shake the image out of my head.
I’m impatient with the idleness fencing me inside my head, so I evaluate my situation again. I won’t have another go at the lifting system. It is as futile as hammering the rock with my multi-tool file. My options seem to have played out. I reconsider my remaining choices for the twenty-fifth time, it must be, clinging to the idea that I might have missed something.
I still haven’t given amputation a full chance. I didn’t even try to cut myself yesterday. I stopped short. Was it because I wasn’t ready or because I was afraid it would end badly? I remember how the sight of the metal blade against my wrist repelled my hand and left my stomach heaving. I’m less than confident about the webbing tourniquet I crafted yesterday. Maybe my reticence signals a need to further prepare my strategy. Escaping this canyon on foot-scrambling the tightly twisting canyon, rappelling sixty-five feet, and then hiking eight miles-after a full-extremity amputation mandates a world-class tourniquet. In the end, I don’t care if I do damage to my residual limb’s tissue or remaining blood vessels with a flawless constricting device. The main problem is stopping the imminent threat to life, stanching the blood flow completely. So how can I improve my tourniquet, and thereby my plan? I’ve already ruled out my water-pack tubing; it’s too stiff to tie a solid knot. The webbing isn’t stretchy enough; it doesn’t conform to my arm’s contours, and I worry about getting it sufficiently tight. I need something more flexible than the tubing and more elastic than the…That’s it! Elastic! The neoprene tubing insulation from my CamelBak is stretchy and supple but strong. It’s perfect.
I’m elated at the idea. I retrieve the discarded tubing insulation from my pack, where I dropped the parts left over from yesterday’s surgical prep session. Why didn’t I think of this before? Using my left hand to twice wrap the thin black neoprene around my right forearm just two inches below my elbow, I tie a simple overhand knot and tighten one end in my teeth, then double and triple the knot. I take my carabiner with the purple marking tape-the same one I used yesterday, I note-and clip the neoprene, twisting it six times. Clamping down on my forearm, the material pinches my skin. I adjust my arm hairs under the band, but it still hurts. For some reason, the pain pleases me, perhaps because it reassures me that the tourniquet is working. I can see what little pink is left in my forearm fade to fish-belly white, and the flesh bunched up between my elbow and the tourniquet flashes to bright red. Oh yeah, this is way better than the webbing idea. The ache in my arm flares, but my self-satisfaction overrides it. I’m pleased with myself, and with the tourniquet’s squeeze, less masochism than a renewed sparkle of hope. I’m taking action. And it feels very good to be taking action.
I’m ready for the next step. I take my multi-tool and switch it from the battered file to the longer of the two knife blades, forgetting my plans to use the sharper one. Instead of pointing the tip into the tendon gap at my wrist, I hold it with the blade against the upper part of my forearm. Surprising myself, I press on the blade and slowly draw the knife across my forearm. Nothing happens. Huh. Repeating the act, I press harder with my palm on the tool’s grip. Still nothing. No cut, no blood, nothing. Extracting the short knife, I vigorously saw back and forth at my forearm, growing more frustrated with each unproductive attempt. Exasperated, I give up. This is shit! The damn blade won’t break the skin. How the hell am I going to carve through two bones with a knife that won’t even cut my skin? God damn it to hell.
Embittered, I set the knife atop the chockstone, unclip the carabiner, and loosen the tourniquet. After a minute, the weak blood flow in my arm raises an irritated series of red lines on my skin where I was sawing with the knife. These aggravated scratches are the sole evidence of my attempt at amputation.
That’s pathetic, Aron; just pathetic.
Back to waiting.
Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. A black raven flies overhead. I check my watch. It’s eight-fifteen A.M.-precisely the same time I saw a raven yesterday morning. I wonder if it’s the same one. Of course it is. It probably has a nest down the canyon someplace. How kooky is it that the bird flew off at exactly the same time it did yesterday? It seems unnatural to me that a living thing would have such a refined sense of time. The sunlight or air temperature must trigger some response that tells the bird it’s time to go find some food. I don’t know.
More predictably but no less punctually, the dagger of sunlight appears about an hour later, and I stretch out to it at 9:35 for my ten-minute “sun salute” break. With the twin visits of the raven and the sun dagger, I figure that my morning routines are completed. Then, for the first time, I feel pressure in my bladder. I unclip from the daisy chain, unzip my shorts, and turn around to urinate. The sand soaks up the liquid before it can puddle or splash, seemingly absorbing my urine faster than it falls. It doesn’t smell as bad or look as dark as I’d have figured, seeing as how it’s been two days since I peed. Feeling nature’s other call, I take off my harness and drop my pants in an attempt to defecate. I don’t want to stink up the canyon, but I don’t have any choice. My concern quickly turns out to be moot; it’s a false alarm.
Tired from the stress of the early-morning rounds of elevated and dashed hopes, I let my mind drift. I recall meeting an Australian outdoorsman, Warren MacDonald, at the Banff Mountain Film Festival last November. The festival was showing a documentary of the hiking accident in Tasmania that cost Warren both his legs above the knees. We met at a dinner where Warren filled me in on some of the details. Leaving his partner in camp to go to the bathroom one night, he crossed a nearby streambed, took care of business, and, on his way back, spent a few minutes climbing some boulders near the bank. That was when he pulled a tremendously large boulder onto himself, crushing both his legs and trapping himself in the shallow creek. By the time his partner realized something was wrong, a rainstorm had begun, and Warren found himself waiting for help in the rising waters of the stream. It took rescuers two days to free him, prying up the car-sized boulder with a hydraulic lifting jack. I saw his movie the next night, stunned at the images of Warren under the rock, and amazed by his recovery and return to the mountains. Within two years of his accident and learning to use prostheses, Warren climbed Federation Peak, one of the highest and most remote mountains in Tasmania.
From my ensnared position in the bottom of Blue John, I feel a profound level of empathy for what Warren endured. It strikes me as funny, the irony that within six months of meeting him, I would become the second hiker I’d heard of to be immovably pinned by a boulder. Maybe there have been others, too, I don’t know. I wonder to myself how he went to the bathroom while he was trapped. I envy Warren’s fortune at having a companion nearby to get help. If only I had been with someone…Warren’s story inspires me to think that if I do survive this experience in the canyon, I, too, will continue climbing and enjoying the outdoors. I won’t perform piano concertos like I did in college, but hey, those are the breaks.
I pass the rest of the morning and early afternoon alternating between my few activities: standing and sitting, chipping unenthusiastically at the rock, looking at the sky for early signs of flash-flood danger, swatting at insects, counting the minutes and hours until my next sip of water. Finally, it is three o’clock, the hour I’ve been waiting for. It’s my second significant milestone, the end of my second full day trapped.
Pulling my video camera out of my backpack again, I blow the grit off the lens and align it in its spot on top of the chockstone. This is the most action I’ll create for myself during the afternoon. It’s uplifting to break the tedium of waiting, but unfortunately, I don’t have any good news to share. I sigh and begin speaking.
“It’s the forty-eight-hour mark now. It’s three o’clock on Monday. I have about one hundred and fifty milliliters of water left. That’s five ounces.” I pause and consider my dispassionate reaction to the statement. Through the first day of my entrapment, I felt an emotional connection to the amount of water I had, the umbilical tug of its life-sustaining essence compelling me to make it last as long as I could. Now that feeling is disconnected. Sometime in the night, my final countdown began without notice. There’s so little water, it doesn’t matter that there’s any left at all-it can no longer affect how long I’ll survive. By morning, the water will be gone. I’ve come to accept that fact, and with acceptance, my looming dread dissipates, leaving only emptiness.
My next thought is of my sister. I look directly into the camera lens, imagining her sitting in her living room watching this tape someday in the future. I see her face and her eyes looking back at me as though through the camera. “Sonja, I’m very proud of you. I didn’t get to hear firsthand how your championships went, but I heard from Mom that you placed very well at the national competitions, that you were tenth overall in speech and debate in the nation. Hot damn, girl. I’m very proud of you. Not just for that but for who you are.
“I’ve been thinking about that. My friend Rob in Aspen says to me several…frequently…several times that, confusingly, ‘It’s not what you do but who you are.’ I kind of got hung up on that a lot, because I always thought who I was, was very much wrapped up with what I did. That I was happy because of the things that I did that made me happy. If things you do make you happy, then they can also make you unhappy.
“I think that’s why I found myself being as ambitious and energetic-” The wind interrupts me, and I shiver, muttering, “It’s cold,” then continue where I left off: “-to do all the outings that I did.”
The video letter to my sister has turned into a confessional. While I don’t feel regret for how I’ve lived, I think I’m trying to share some advice with Sonja, something she’ll take from this that will help her to be happy with herself. We’re similar in our assertiveness, our intelligence, and our sense of inner competition that drives us to perfectionism. I’m hoping she won’t stumble into the pitfall that I have fallen into, of letting my ability to create what I want in my life convince me that “I am” only insofar as “I do.” Yes, I am a mountaineer, an engineer, a music enthusiast, an outdoorsman. But I am not only those things; I am also a person who enriches other people’s lives, and whose life is enriched by other people when I let them.
“In retrospect, I’ve learned a lot. One of the things I’m learning here is that I didn’t enjoy the people’s company that I was with enough, or as much as I could have. A lot of really good people have spent a lot of time with me. Very often I would tend to ignore or diminish their presence in seeking the essence of the experience. All that’s to say, I’m figuring some things out.”
My rambling explanation eases the guilt I feel for my selfishness. Bringing to mind those memories has lifted my spirit and even made me smile despite my present circumstances. That I spent so much of my time leaving my friends behind for solo trips, or even for some alone time when I was with them, reveals a self-centeredness that displeases me. The memories evoking the most gratitude for my life are of times with my family and friends. I am beginning to understand the priceless nature of their company, and it depresses me to realize that wasn’t always the focus of our time together.
I record a few snippets of my ongoing efforts to free myself. “On the situational front here, I rerigged and rerigged, even got to a six-to-one pulley system-too much friction. I wasn’t even pulling the main rope taut-too many sharp bends in the rope. I chipped away some more at the rock. It’s hopeless.” Fatigue and sleep deprivation cloud my thinking, and I fail to mention that I tried to saw through my arm.
Now I turn toward the bleak prospects of outside intervention and rescue. “I got to the point where I was realizing the slim factors that might go into my rescue, and I don’t see those happening and coming together at all in time. I’m thinking about Leona, my roommate who worries about me as much as my family does. I just told her that I was going to Utah. She’ll know when I’m not back tonight that I’m overdue. Even if she immediately files a police report, it’ll be twenty-four hours before they take action on anything. That said, I think there’s a very slim chance that a ranger even goes by the trailhead where I parked at Horseshoe, except for weekends, to lead the walks to see the Great Gallery.”
Shaking my head, I gaze at my sliver of sky, at the foot-wide bottom of the canyon, and at the rigging, anything to avoid the condemning reflection of my face in the viewfinder.
“Brad and Leah were expecting to hear from me on Saturday, but when they didn’t, they probably didn’t think much of it. I was supposed to meet them for the party out at Goblin Valley State Park. But I doubt they really missed me enough to take action. They didn’t know where I was going, anyways. I didn’t even know. One of the things that got me so excited was I’d crossed the state line before I knew where I was headed to, where I was going on Friday, and even then I wasn’t sure about what I was going to do on Saturday. Oh, man.”
I know I broke one of my rules when I left without detailing my plans in advance. Now I’m paying an overdue debt. How many times have I gotten away with making changes to my itinerary without notifying someone? It happens all the time. Not anymore.
“I also could have said something more to Megan and Kristi, the Outward Bound girls. I should have gone with them. Just left and gone out the West Fork.”
Again I shake my head in self-pity and fight off a series of long blinks. I deserve all of this.
“God, I am really screwed. I’m going to shrivel up right here over the course of the next few days. If I had a way to end it, I probably would, tomorrow afternoon or so. It’s miserable. It’s cold. I can’t keep the wind off me. It just blows. It’s not even that much of a breeze, but it’s cold. It comes from back there.” I motion over my left shoulder with a toss of my head.
“I’m doing what I can, but this sucks. It’s really bad. This is one of the worst ways to go. Knowing what’s going to happen, but it still being three or four days out.” My voice trails off to a hoarse whisper. I hope I don’t last for four more days. I can’t imagine what shape I’ll be in if I’m still alive on Friday.
Feeling the weight of my impending demise, I make a logical transition to what to do with my stuff. I can’t avoid the moroseness of it, but it seems practical to advise my family about my assets, effectively recording a short version of a last will and testament.
“I did want to say, on the logistical side of things, I have some American Express insurance that should cover costs of the recovery operation when that does happen. Bank-account balances should take care of my credit-card debts. You’ll have to sell my house, Mom and Dad. Possession-wise, I don’t know if Sonja can use my computer and video camera…There are pictures on the memory stick in my pocket and in the camera. My friend Chip down in New Mexico can have my CDs. All my outdoor crap, Sonja, if you want it, if any of it fits and you can use it, you’re welcome to it.”
Nearly in tears, I’m finished talking. I stop the camera, fold the screen into its stowed position, and put it back in my pack. I hold my head in my left hand and dejectedly shake it, sniffling, wiping my palm down over my nose and mouth, my fingers wiping at my eyelashes and brushing the facial hair under my nose and around my frown lines.
A half hour later, around 3:35 P.M. on Monday afternoon, I have to urinate again. “How is this possible?” I wonder. That’s twice today, despite the fact that I’m most certainly dehydrated. What’s going on?
Save it, Aron. Pee into your CamelBak. You’re going to need it.
Obeying, I transfer the contents of my bladder into my empty water reservoir, saving the orangish-brown discharge for the unappetizing but inevitable time when it will be the only liquid I have. I should have saved the first batch, I realize with hindsight. It was much clearer than this and didn’t smell half as nasty. I debate whether I should drink it or not but defer that choice for later.
I eagerly dig out my digital still camera for the first time and take a series of pictures: a close-up of my arm disappearing into the rock; a detail of my anchor system that suspends me in my harness; and two self-portraits-one looking downcanyon, and one from above my left shoulder that shows me with the chockstone. Reviewing the photos, I also flip through the ones I took during the first two days of my vacation on Mount Sopris and around Moab, then the ones of Megan and Kristi in the upper part of Blue John Canyon. The angels.