Go inside the half-century-long mystery of the Dylatov Pass Incident.
On January 27, 1959, nine Soviet college students embarked on a journey into the Northern Urals. When they were all found dead, some had major chest fractures that could only have been caused by an immense force, comparable to that of a car crash. And in the most gruesome instance, one was missing her tongue, eyes, part of the lips, as well as facial tissue, and a fragment of her skull bone.
Go inside the half-century-long mystery of the Dylatov Pass Incident.
Aron Ralston — the man behind the true story of 127 Hours — drank his own urine and carved his own epitaph before amputating his arm in a Utah canyon.
After seeing the 2010 film 127 Hours, Aron Ralston called it “so factually accurate it is as close to a documentary as you can get and still be a drama,” and added that it was “the best film ever made.”
Starring James Franco as a climber who is forced to amputate his own arm after a canyoneering accident, 127 Hours caused several viewers to pass out when they saw Franco’s character dismembering himself. They were even more horrified when they realized that 127 Hours was actually a true story.
Just a few months after the avalanche, Aron Ralston traveled to southeastern Utah to explore Canyonlands National Park on April 25, 2003. He slept in his truck that night, and at 9:15 a.m. the next morning — a beautiful, sunny Saturday — he rode his bicycle 15 miles to Bluejohn Canyon, an 11-mile-long gorge that in some places measures just three feet wide.
The 27-year-old locked his bike and walked toward the canyon’s opening.
At around 2:45 p.m., as he descended into the canyon, a giant rock above him slipped. The next thing he knew, his right arm was lodged between an 800-pound boulder and a canyon wall. Ralston was also trapped 100 feet below the desert surface and 20 miles away from the nearest paved road.
To make matters worse, he hadn’t told anyone about his climbing plans, and he didn’t have any way to signal for help. He inventoried his provisions: two burritos, some candy bar crumbs, and a bottle of water.
Ralston futilely tried chipping away at the boulder. Eventually, he ran out of water and was forced to drink his own urine.
Early on, he considered cutting off his arm. He experimented with tourniquets and made superficial cuts to test his knives’ sharpness. But he didn’t know how he’d saw through his bone with his cheap multi-tool — the kind you’d get for free “if you bought a $15 flashlight,” he later said.
Distraught and delirious, Aron Ralston resigned himself to his fate. He used his dull tools to carve his name into the canyon wall, along with his birth date, his presumed date of death, and the letters RIP. Then, he used a video camera to tape goodbyes to his family and tried to sleep.
That night, as he drifted in and out of consciousness, Ralston dreamt of himself — with only half his right arm — playing with a child. Awaking, he believed the dream was a sign that he would survive and that he would have a family. More determined than ever, he threw himself into survival.
The dream of a future family left Aron Ralston with an epiphany: He didn’t have to cut through his bones. He could break them instead.
Using the torque from his trapped arm, he managed to break his ulna and his radius. After his bones were disconnected, he fashioned a tourniquet from the tubing of his CamelBak water bottle and cut off his circulation entirely. Then, he was able to use a cheap, dull, two-inch knife to cut through his skin and muscle, and a pair of pliers to cut through his tendons.
He left his arteries for last, knowing that after he severed them he wouldn’t have much time. “All the desires, joys, and euphorias of a future life came rushing into me,” Ralston later said at a press conference. “Maybe this is how I handled the pain. I was so happy to be taking action.”
The entire process took an hour, during which Ralston lost 25 percent of his blood volume. High on adrenaline, Ralston climbed out of the slot canyon, rappelled down a 65-foot sheer cliff, and hiked six of the eight miles back to his car — all while dehydrated, losing blood, and one-handed.
Six miles into his hike, he met a family from the Netherlands who had been hiking in the canyon. They gave him Oreos and water and contacted the authorities. Canyonlands officials had been alerted that Ralston was missing and had been searching the area by helicopter — which would have proved futile, as Ralston was trapped below the surface of the canyon.
Four hours after amputating his arm, Ralston was rescued by medics. They believed that the timing could not have been more perfect. Had Ralston amputated his arm any sooner, he likely would have bled to death. And had he waited any longer, he probably would have died in the canyon.
Comments
Post a Comment