Backstory: Aron Ralston In '127 Hours'

www.go2bagtrade.com


On April 26, 2003, a 27-year-old man named Aron Ralston decided to go climbing in Blue John Canyon in Utah's Canyonlands National Park. It was not an unusual trip; a year earlier, Ralston had quit his job as a mechanical engineer for Intel to climb all of Colorado's gamed "fourteener" mountains. He was an experienced climber, but still decided to take Blue John Canyon by himself. The decision cost him an arm but earned him a movie made about his life.
Ralston, the man James Franco plays in the critically lauded "127 Hours," was a bit of a jam-band fan (his favorite act to see live was The String Cheese Incident) and was so run down by the corporate life that he became a full-time hiker. He was getting good at it until Blue John Canyon happened. (He had been posting his progress online at his now defunct Geocities page.)
Here's how Ralston got stuck. He was climbing over a 800-pound boulder when, unexpectedly, it jarred loose and smashed his right hand against the canyon wall. The massive weight of the boulder lodged Ralston there, ultimately cutting off all circulation to his hand and essentially "killing" it. And the hand was the least of Ralston's problems: Unable to move the boulder, he spent five days stuck there, drinking his own urine to survive, before finally realizing what needed to be done. In a nice touch, he had a video camera there to broadcast what he thought would be his last thoughts to friends and family. Here's how he described the clarity making the videos helped him:
"It gave me a sense of completion. Not only did the camera let me tell my family and friends what had happened, but also it gave me the opportunity to tell them how I was feeling and that I loved them. I liked the thought that I wasn't going to leave an unexplained mess. I read the transcript from the video of American contractor Nick Berg, who had been taken hostage and eventually beheaded in Iraq. Our messages were very similar: This is who I am; these are my parents; this is where they live. It struck me that in our last hours, even though we may have moved away from those things, there's a level-headed understanding of what's important."
Photos of lost hiker Aron Ralston >>
Much of this in "127 Hours"; Ralston was on set for a good deal of the filming. And Ralston is still out there, in real life, after the closing credits. He works as a motivational speaker and wrote a book called "Between A Rock And A Hard Place" about the ordeal. Perhaps most impressive: He's not only still climbing, he's still climbing solo. In 2005, he became the first person to climb all those "fourteeners" solo in winter. Amazingly, he says his prosthetic right arm actually makes climbing easier; he had doctors fashion it into a "combination climbing pick and adze." He still brings his camera with him too.



www.go2bagtrade.com