I chanced upon this amazing survival story of mountain climber Aron Ralston while browsing through Oscar Award winner Danny Boyle’s forth-coming movies. Yes, Danny Boyle is making a movie named 127 Hours based upon the real life story of Aron Ralston. Well this blog post is not about the movie. It is about this extraordinary will of one man to survive under immense pain mentally and physically.
       Aron Ralston is a mountain climber and on one fateful day he had his right hand wedged between the mountain and an 800 pound rock. Over the next 5 days he would break the bones off his hand and then cut the skin tissues off with his blunt multi-purpose knife. Once freed from the rock, he hikes out of the canyon in the hot midday sun. While hiking out, he encountered a family of three on vacation from the Netherlands who gave him water and two Oreo cookies. They then alerted the authorities. Just as the search helicopter was turning around to fuel up, they had spotted Ralston and the family. He was ultimately rescued by a helicopter search team. His arm was retrieved by park authorities and removed from under the boulder. It was cremated and given to Ralston.

127 Hours Movie Trailer

Aron Ralston describes the amputation