Aron Ralston

Author 

Mountain climber and author of Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Pinned in a 3-foot wide slot canyon near the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park south of Moab, Utah, Aron Ralston cut through his own arm below the elbow to escape, applying a tourniquet and administering first aid before rigging anchors and fixing a rope to rappel to the bottom of Blue John Canyon and hiking out to meet rescuers.

The episode marked Ralston's second brush with death since February, when he was buried in an avalanche while backcountry skiing in the Colorado Rockies. Ralston, an avid outdoorsman who has climbed 49 of Colorado's 14,000-foot-plus mountains, was buried up to his neck in the avalanche, managing to dig himself out along with a completely buried skiing companion within 15 minutes. Ralston documented the life altering experience and his remarkable will to survive in his book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

He was featured on a two-hour edition of Dateline NBC called Desperate Days in Blue John Canyon and appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman and Howard Stern's radio program. Aron Ralston was a student in mechanical engineering and French at Carnegie Mellon University, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He left his job (as a mechanical engineer) with Intel in 2002 to return to Colorado to do more hiking and climbing.