Aron Ralston

Aron was pinned in a 3-foot wide slot canyon near the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park. Ralston cut through his own arm below the elbow then applied a tourniquet and administered first aid to himself before rigging anchors and fixing a rope to rappel to the bottom of Blue John Canyon and beyond all odds, meet rescuers. Ralston, who was hiking alone when the boulder fell and pinned his right arm . Ralston told rescuers that on Thursday morning he realized he would not survive unless he took drastic action. He had run out of water on Tuesday.

The episode marked Ralston's second brush with death since February, when he was buried in an avalanche while backcountry skiing in the Colorado Rockies. Ralston, an avid outdoorsman who has climbed 49 of Colorado's 14,000- foot-plus mountains, was buried up to his neck in the avalanche, managing to dig himself out along with a completely buried skiing companion within 15 minutes.

Aron Ralston grew up in the Midwest before moving to Colorado when he was twelve, a place where he became an avid outdoorsman. In 2002, he gave up a career as a mechanical engineer in New Mexico and moved to Aspen, Colorado, where among other things he continued his attempt to climb the fifty high points...

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