Stuck Under Boulder ALONE For 127 Hours! Aron Ralston Story

[Music] hey guys welcome back to my channel and welcome to another episode of rescued my newest series that I've been really enjoying so today I'm talking about a Colorado case kinda it doesn't take place in Colorado but the person it's about is originally from Colorado and there was a lot of talk about it when I was younger I remember this happening and I thought it would be really interesting to share with you although I'm sure a lot of you have already heard this story there is a movie about it this morning on the boulder we have a very special guest Aron Ralston gosh it's a real pleasure to be here thank you it's called 127 hours maybe you don't know that full details you know movies are slightly different two things before you get started one my giant rabbit is in the background don't be alarmed I don't think she's ever been on my main channel she just got spayed so she's recovering from surgery and she's just chilling in the background on my bed today second thing is this video was kindly sponsored by audible so as you guys know I just love using audible I am dyslexic so it is a lot easier to listen to an audiobook for me it's just a way more pleasurable and enjoyable experience on audible there are so many inspiring authors and voices telling the stories that it truly makes it feel like you're almost in the story just by the way that they tell it audible has the largest selection of audiobooks on the planet that's right folks and now with their new audible original selection that library has gotten way bigger if you don't know what an audible original is it's an exclusive audio title created by celebrated storytellers from all over the world as diverse as theater journalism literature and more now every month on audible members get one free audiobook as well as two free audible originals which is really really cool if you don't like your audiobook you can exchange it no questions asked and you get to keep your audiobooks they never expire even if you cancel your membership they are yours to keep it's like having a book on your shelf today I'd like to recommend 127 hours between a rock and a hard place by Aaron Ralston is the survivor that we are going to be talking about today it's a really interesting read his story is absolutely incredible I think after you guys hear the story you'll want to know even more from his perspective so start your free 30-day trial and get one free audiobook plus two audible originals today at audible.com slash Kendall Rea or text Kendall Rea to 500 500 that's audible.com slash Kendall Rea and text Kendall Rea to 500 500 but now let's get into our story for today so today I'm going to be telling you about Aaron Ralston he was born on October 27th 1975 in Marion Ohio he and his family actually moved to Denver when he was 12 years old and he was very very smart and studious he was kind of known as a nerd in school but all that time that he put towards school really paid off because he ended up attending Carnegie Mellon University and graduated with a double major in engineering and French not only that but he was also musically talented and loved to play at the piano he even had a minor in piano performance after Aaron graduated he got a job at Intel traveling to Arizona Washington and New Mexico for five years and during this time he found a huge passion for the outdoors he absolutely loved to hike ski swim snowboard I mean literally anything that allowed him to be outside and one thing that he truly loved was rock climbing and he ended up getting so good at rock climbing over the years that he became really well-known in the rock climbing world like top level very good high skilled he even was a search-and-rescue volunteer and that just shows us that he was very well educated in wilderness and safety measures and you know basic first-aid things like that so he was very knowledgeable when it came to handling the outdoors at one point he even got the opportunity to climb to the tallest peak in North America which is Mount Denali formerly known as Mount McKinley now obviously this would require Aaron to travel to Alaska and he'd have to take a large time off of work so most jobs aren't going to allow you to do that so in 2002 he ended up quitting his job to pursue his dream and eventually he ended up in Aspen Colorado working local sporting goods store surrounded by his type of people and he was really really happy in this job and I have been asked and obviously I live here and I love that area it's so beautiful really anywhere in the mountain working at any mountain town small shop I'm imagining would be pretty relaxing because it's very laid-back up in those towns it's slow-moving there's not like a hustle bustle vibe so he probably loved that because other people he worked with also probably value being outside and understand taking time off for that like hover you there's a perfect opportunity for him he was really really happy there one of Aaron's goals was actually to climb all of the 14 errs in Colorado which is about 50 and it actually did not take him long to accomplish this so he decided to redo this goal as a bit of a challenge and this time he was going to be climbing all the 40 nur's in the snow in the middle of winter alone and he was definitely a bit of a risk-taker he was very confident in his ability maybe too confident and sometimes got himself into risky situations for example in 2003 he was skiing with friends in the backcountry of the Rocky Mountains unlike ski resorts though backcountry slopes aren't managed they're just kind of a free-for-all they're not monitored at all either so there can be avalanches as well it's extremely dangerous and not recommended at one point Erin was skiing with his friends like I said and got stuck in a class-five avalanche which is like the worst that you can be in and he was buried in over his head but luckily he survived that but only a few months after his accident in the spring of 2003 he decided to get back on the horse not literally but you know get back outside so on Thursday April 24th it was a really nice day outside so he decided he wanted to get outside anywhere didn't care where it was so he left his home in Aspen and just started driving west he didn't have a specific plan on where he was going but he ended up in southeastern Utah in the Canyonlands National Park and this National Park is completely in the middle of nowhere it's 500 square miles of remote desert so Friday night Aaron decided to camp in his truck and at this point he was in the desert he was far from any civilization and then on Saturday morning he woke up and he's surrounded by beautiful Canyonlands and in Utah is gorgeous I've never been well I've seen it and it looks incredible so he decides he wants to take his bike and ride it into the park and he only planned on being in there you know for a few hours so he didn't bring all his supplies he was gonna come back in the afternoon and you know regroup from there and do something else after that one of the landmarks that Aaron specifically wanted to see was one that was called a Blue John Canyon and it was about a 20 mile hike from his base camp Blue John Canyon is a slot canyon and that is a really narrow canyon and it also is very deep so Aaron got to the canyon and he was walking around it walking through checking it out it's really really pretty and he got to an area that was about three stories deep he then found a boulder that was wedged in between the canyon kind of suspended in the air between the two sides of the wall so Aaron decided that he wanted to get to the bottom of the canyon so he decided to climb down one of the sides to see if he could get all the way down and he used the boulder as support he kind of like leaned his hand and foot on it the easiest way for me to get down was to use that as an intermediate step and so I stood on it and kicked at it then stepped on to it I was hanging from the boulder from the top of it where the last good handholds were and that was when it shifted and as he was doing that he thought the boulder was sturdy but it wasn't it slipped and he actually ended up sliding and caught his arm up in the boulder I'm gonna put in a clip of him explaining I was hanging from the boulder from the top of it we're the last good handholds work and that was when it shifted so I dropped down here and the boulder came and it smashed my left hand here and then it smashed my right hand up here and then it slid down and it actually dragged my arm down and my arm was right about here now Aaron is at the bottom of a 100-foot canyon and you imagine his arm is smashed under an 800-pound boulder and he's looking up at this narrow almost like window to the sky he started to freak out he knew that there was no way he was going to be able to tug his arm out I mean his arm was crushed and let's talk about that for a second the pain alone from the Boulder crushing your arm would be so insane I'm not sure how you would do anything else after that and to make matters even worse Aaron realized that he made the biggest mistake that you can make if you're going to be going outside alone out into the wilderness and that is tell someone where you're going at a minimum honestly I suggest going with a buddy I personally would never go out in the wilderness alone but at the very least you've got to tell somebody where you are like where a tracking device or something you have to plan just in case something goes wrong that someone won't know where to find you you know he's from Colorado's from Aspen why would he be in Utah you know no one knows specifically to go there he could be anywhere any place in Colorado no one knows where he is so Aaron didn't have much on him but he did have a little knife and it's not a great knife but he first started using the knife to try to chip away at the boulder this obviously is really not doing anything I mean it's an 800 pound Boulder and if anything is just making the knife more and more dull I just held it like this and took tap tap tap tap tap so for several hours he tried it chipping away at the boulder but it wasn't long before night fell and he realized he was gonna be there a really long time I mean at least through the night so he knew that he had to conserve what he did have and he only had 20 ounces of water it's really not a lot he did have two small burritos packed with him which was good but how long can that possibly last he didn't know how long he was going to be there so it was hard for him to know how much that he should consume at a time to keep himself going but he knew that he did not have a lot of time and that's because he had a limited supply of water humans can live a lot longer without food but water you need water to survive I only had 20 ounces so it wasn't long before Aaron started to think about having to cut off his own arm he knew that the chances of someone finding him out there were so slim this area did not have a lot of people going through it and you know the weekend was coming to an end and so the weekend hikers were all going to be done for the week his best chance was already coming to an end as Sunday night was coming closer this area in Blue John Canyon that he chose was specifically chosen by him because there wasn't a lot of people there and he wanted to be alone so he had another night in the canyon and then the next day rolled around and he continued to try to figure out ways that he could get out of there including making a pulley system somehow he tried to rig a system that could move the boulder but it's 800 pounds it wasn't gonna work Aaron also realized at this point that he wasn't supposed to be at work until Tuesday so he was not going to be looked for by people at his job until then and it was Saturday night so at this point Aaron decided to start recording himself with his video camera he didn't think he really had much of a chance and he wanted to make sure whoever found him got the footage to his parents on Sunday it's marching like 24-hour mark being stuck whoever finds this please make an attempt to get it to them I can't stop thinking about good grapefruit cheese margarita Oh J or a popsicle all these great things that I'd love to have an orange oh material I can't think about that stuff it's really sinking in I'm done this is so many things about it so many things it's gonna be a really long time for anybody gets to me god I'm really screwed my mind says shrivel up right here over the course in the next few days he wasn't it's pretty much suicide it's a four hours from here to my vehicle climbing it was probably the impossible or from one hand the bloodbath and my dehydration I think I think I would die I kept there at this point Aaron was starting to run out of food and water eventually and he knew that he could only survive about three more days without water after it was gone so he did not have a lot of time he said he was already starting to feel the effects of extreme dehydration he was unable to control his body temperature he'd get really hot and really cold and he just felt like his body was falling apart so eventually Monday rolled around and it had officially been three days since he was originally first stuck in the canyon in addition to dehydration and hypothermia Aaron was also really sleep-deprived just because of the way he was standing up it was really really uncomfortable I mean can you imagine standing in that position with your arm stuck smashed under a rock and also standing and trying to like get some Z's you know that's pretty hard he said he would go in and out of like a dreamlike State but he never felt like he was getting full sleep so now his body is really lacking all the basic human essentials and it's gonna go downhill quick on Monday night he was almost completely out of food and water so he decided to start saving his urine because as disgusting as it is it can save your life if you have no water you can drink your own urine by Tuesday morning Aaron was starting to realize that if he didn't just cut off his own arm he was going to die there he had just finished his last sip of water and he knew he did not have that much time so he had to think quick he had to have you know so much strength to be able to do it that he couldn't wait until the absolute last second when he was barely alive and this was also the day that Aaron was supposed to go into work so his boss did freak out a little bit but thought you know I'll give him one extra day just because he's so skilled that he's probably fine you know maybe he's just running late or he did get stuck I really know what he was thinking I own would have called right away that seems just kind of crazy to me so I'll warn you this next part is a little bit gross Aaron decided that he was going to see if his knife was sharp enough to cut his arm off he said he started to do it but it was so dull that it was barely cutting through his skin I took the knife and I stabbed myself into the upper part of my forearm right here and he was able to sink the knife blade in but I I wouldn't they would never be able to cut through the bone with this with this knife he knew that there would be no way to actually cut through the bone Jesus I tried I tried cutting my arm off I couldn't even barely break the skin with this stupid knife tried a couple different blades and all I did was just knock myself up I barely even get any blood to draw by Wednesday morning Aaron still hadn't showed up for his shift again so his boss at this point decided he was going to report it down deep in my stomach I knew something was seriously wrong someone of his physical abilities if they're 50 miles in the middle of nowhere and break their leg they're gonna he's probably gonna build to crawl out in a day or do whatever it is that he needs to do Aaron's roommate also was concerned about him and had no idea where he was so a missing persons report was filed by Aspen PD and they also informed Aaron's parents about their missing son I answered the whole phone line and Brian told me who it was and asked me if I knew about Aaron or where he was and I said no I have no idea isn't he at work and he said no he's overdue didn't show up yesterday and didn't show up this morning and I said Brian you understand what that means and he said yeah I fear I said I think I know as well as well as you do it's very serious as well as that means he's in deep trouble something is really really wrong Aaron was starting to feel extreme guilt about the fact that he didn't tell anyone where he was he knew better than that he normally did I don't know why for whatever reason he decided not to but he really was starting to regret that he was starting to think about all the things in his life that he was going to miss including his sister's upcoming wedding which is you know really depressing to think about so at one point he decided to edge his own name into the rock with the knife along with his birthday and our IP next to it which is really sad [Music] just identify who this body was that was that was here and I asked October 75 above my name and April Oh three to go no attorney happen he was pretty certain that he was going to die he even left instructions on that camera for them to cremate him and scatter his ashes but to his surprise Thursday morning rolled around and Aaron was still alive by this time police had actually traced his credit card to a grocery store in Moab so search team started to check trails around there to see if they could find his car but in the meantime Aaron actually decided to make the decision to try and cut his arm off I mean taking my hand my arm giving it everything that I had and was twisting myself around and trying to slide my arm up and down like this he knew he wouldn't be able to cut through with a knife so instead he decided to great bone because his arm was pretty much dead I mean the rest of it is like just [ __ ] so a lot of the nerves are dead it's still incredibly painful but it was easier at this point came to me this this epiphany that I could break that I could break the bones because my arm was caught so tightly that I could torque myself and this is the really gnarly part but he was basically able to break his bone in two different ways to free most of his body from the with Boulder he just had skin and tendons like stuck in there it slammed my body against the opposite wall I grabbed the backside of the boulder and even got my feet up to where I was I was standing halfway up the wall grabbing the back side the rock and clumping my and so finally that bottom bone snapped and this POW sound what kind of echoing through the canyon and I don't even know if I started feeling excited at that point but I just knew the next thing that I had to do was they had to break the other bone and so I grabbed the bottom side of the rock and it pushed and tried to sink myself down until I was pushing up to create the downward leverage on the top bone until it too made the same noise POW and I said to myself here we go and you're in it now he just had skin and tendons stuck in there and so he had to cut through all of that with the little knife like I can't imagine how long that took and how painful that was and he said one of the worst parts was cutting the nerve ending he even had to cut through the tendons with pliers I just dove into this exercise this this surgery surgical procedure so I ended up taking the pliers side of the knife and using that to grab and twist and rip until the tendon gave way boom and I wasn't even attached anymore and I fell down like this and I I was free but that is the will to survive because you know once he was done he was free Aaron walked out of that Canyon on his own that's [ __ ] amazing Aaron had a tourniquet around his arm he put it in a makeshift sling and he started heading out of the canyon by himself and at this time investigators had found his car and we're doing a massive search of the area but I still don't know if they would have found him because that area was so hidden where he was actually stuck that it's possible that even if they did search they wouldn't have found him in time so it was pretty necessary for him to cut his arm off so he climbed through the rest of the canyon until it opened up into a cliff area and he was actually able to rappel down the cliff I don't know how he did this this is insane so after he got down from the cliff he still had to hike another seven miles out of the canyon then he would have to climb an 800-foot really steep hill to get to his truck he was in horrible shape at this point even walking was getting difficult for him he had lost over 25% of his blood supply while he was walking he actually came in contact with someone though it was a couple and their kid who had come from the Netherlands to see Utah and they were shocked to see him like that and we saw a men well covered with blood and they just came running back and I started telling them I just had to cut off my arm a few hours ago I need help I need medical attention I need a helicopter immediately tried to help they gave him two Oreos which was all they had and some water the man stayed with him while the woman and her son went back to go get help and they walked and walked and walked and finally as he was about to start walking up the 800 foot steep hill to his car he heard the sounds of a helicopter and the helicopter appeared it was like everything drained out of me and it was complete relief and thankfulness the helicopter rushed him to an emergency room in Grand Junction and they did surgery on what was left of his arm Aaron really went through it in the hospital as well he had five different surgeries and a bone infection that was life-threatening and it required him to have an IV of antibiotics for months he suffered a ton of chronic pain especially phantom pain which is basically where your body still feels as if there's a limb where there isn't one and you still feel pain from it even though it's not there anymore but this has not stopped airing from living a full life I mean he is so grateful to have survived as his family is so incredibly thankful even though he lost his arm he still participates in outdoor activities what was left of his arm was actually recovered and cremated and Aaron was able to spread the ashes and kind of have closure to this whole experience when he was revisiting the canyon for a TV special that he did Aaron documented his experience in that book that I told you guys about which is titled between a rock and a hard place in September of 2004 and it reached number three on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list and then in 2010 the movie 127 hours came out which was based off the accident the movie did incredible and was nominated for several awards and at the 83rd Academy Awards in 2011 the film was nominated for six Oscars including the Best Picture and Best Actor I still can't believe as I watch and it's so effective that I'm transported through the experience all over again but he's just pretending I mean he's not actually cutting his arm off quite obviously but that it's just he can he can take us there so effectively he never over does it that there's it's just very it's very real even as I I watch it there's the moments where he and when he snaps his bones and he laughs like I was smiling as I was cut it because that was that was this it was just the ecstasy it but I'm not gonna die here I'm gonna get out of this place how accurate is that factually speaking is I mean in the 90 percentile ranged that there are a few things that that were adapted licensed fictionalized even that but to the effect of taking you deeper into the story into the real experience that I had now he just spends a lot of his time public speaking there is a sense in my life that this will be part of my life forever and ever yeah I'm the guy who cut his arm off get myself into a position where I'm grabbing onto one of the sides of the boulder the back of the boulder and I can work my my legs down first if your grandmother gives you a sweater for Christmas that like you feel a little bit of pressure to make sure you wear it instead of like imagine like the gift of having your life like I feel a little bit of pressure the wilderness gave me a gift of my life it's given us all a gift of the story of courage good to meet I work with being accepting that this is my life very inspiring and yet it I also have conversations with my girlfriend about what is my life outside of that I want to know you guys do you think you'd have the courage to cut to your own arm or leg or something off if you had to if it meant surviving or would you drink your own pee even if it meant surviving let me know in the comments below that's it for me today guys I hope you're having a great day and I will see you next you [Music]

Channel: Kendall Rae

Views: 618,685

Rating: 4.9635501 out of 5

Keywords: kendallraeonyt, kendallrae, kendall rae, kendaily, kendall rae vlogs, mile higher, mile higher zoo, id discovery, mile higher podcast, true crime, mystery, unsolved mysteries, crime watch daily, cold case files, investigative, cold case, unsolved, aron ralston, aron ralston interview, 127 hours, james franco, climbing, unsolved mystery, unexplained, buzzfeed unsolved, mysteries, crime, creepypasta, dateline, paranormal, investigation, investigate, crime documentary, eerie, strange, creepy

Id: TPNLWrWQaiQ

Length: 26min 56sec (1616 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019