Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [33]
Even cleared out, the hole is too small for my size-ten foot. But I’m not discouraged; this challenge takes on an added significance. The goal of getting my keys back symbolizes the larger struggle against my entrapment. I seize upon another idea. I retrieve one of the longer sticks that I pulled out from the rocks. It’s a sagebrush stem about two feet long, thin and brittle, and with a convenient bend near the skinny end that might allow me to hook the key ring. I turn on my headlamp to cast some extra light into the hollow and dip the hooked end of my stick down into the hole. The stick easily catches the keys, but it flexes and snaps when I try to fish them up through the gap. Kerplink! The keys jingle against each other as they land back in the sandy fissure. “Damn,” I mutter.
Without the hook, I can only swat at the keys with the broken end of the stick, but I manage to flick them a few inches closer to my toes. I still can’t quite reach the ring with my foot, so I insert the stick between my big and second toes and thread it into the hole from the side. Peering down into the hole with my headlamp, I guide the stick with a series of delicate, jerking movements until it pokes about two inches through the ring loop. Tugging, I extract the keys with the stick until they slip off the end. They’re not all the way out, but I’ve moved them close enough to the crevice’s exit that I can drop the stick and claw at the sand with my toes, grasping the keys in a foot-fist. Not wanting to accidentally drop them again, I lift my left leg until I can reach under my foot with my left hand. Success! It’s the first victory of my entrapment, and it is sweet. I tuck the keys into an accessory pocket on the right side of my shorts and zip it shut.
After I put my sock and my shoe back on, not bothering to tie the laces, I decide to try a new approach to pecking at the boulder with my knife. Selecting a softball-sized stone from the pile below my feet, I maneuver it to the top. Now that it’s in reach, I stretch and grab the rock—not without a spike of pain from my trapped wrist—and set the ten-pound stone on top of the boulder next to my knife. I’ve already discounted the idea of smashing a smaller rock directly against the chockstone, as all the available rocks are of the softer pink sandstone, like the walls. Instead, I plan to use the rock to pound my knife into the chockstone, like a hammer and chisel.
In preparation, I balance my knife so the tip fits in the slight groove I’ve carved in the concavity on the upper right side of the boulder, just above my right wrist, and lean the handle against the canyon wall. I grip the hammer rock tightly to ensure I will accurately hit the head of the knife and bring the hammer down in a gentle trial tap. I’m afraid the rock will kick the knife off the backside of the boulder or down into the rocks beneath my feet. My chiseling setup is as stable as I can manage, but it doesn’t instill much confidence, so I tap the knife carefully a second and third time just to test if it will skitter away. It stays put, but I need to hit harder.
Here goes…I drive the hammer rock into my knife with ten times more force than that last tap. Karunch! The rock detonates in my hand, splitting into one large and a half-dozen smaller pieces, leaving me with a handful of crumbling sandstone as shrapnel flies up into my face. The force of the blow knocks my knife off the chockstone, and it bounces off my shorts, hitting the sand half a yard in front of my right foot. “I can’t win here, nothing’s working,