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Anxiety has my brain
tweaking; searing-hot pain shoots from my wrist up my
arm. I’m frantic, and I cry out, “Oh shit, oh shit,
oh shit!” My desperate brain conjures up a probably
apocryphal story in which an adrenaline-stoked mom
lifts an overturned car to free her baby. I’d give it
even odds that it’s made up, but I do know for
certain that right
now, while my body’s chemicals are raging at
full flood, is the best chance I’ll have to free
myself with brute force. I shove against the large
boulder, heaving against it, pushing with my left hand,
lifting with my knees pressed under the rock. I get good
leverage with the aid of a twelve-inch shelf in front
of my feet. Standing on that, I brace my thighs under
the boulder and thrust upward repeatedly, grunting,
“Come on_._._._move!” Nothing.
I rest, and then I surge
again against the rock. Again nothing. I replant my
feet. Feeling around for a better grip on the bottom of
the chockstone, I reposition my upturned left hand on a
handle of rock, take a deep breath, and slam into the
boulder, harder than any of my previous attempts. “Yeearrgg_._._._unnnhhh,”
the exertion forces the air from my lungs, all but
masking the quiet, hollow sound of the boulder
tottering. The stone’s movement is imperceptible;
all I get is a spike in the already extravagant pain,
and I gasp, “Ow! Fuck!”
I’ve shifted the
boulder a fraction of an inch, and it’s settled onto
my wrist a bit more. This thing weighs a lot more than I
do—it’s a testament to how amped I am that I moved
it at all—and now all I want is to move it back. I get
into position again, pulling with my left hand on top of
the stone, and budge the rock back ever so slightly,
reversing what I just did. The pain eases a little. In
the process, I’ve lacerated and bruised the skin over
my left quadriceps above the knee. I’m sweating hard.
With my left hand, I lift my right shirtsleeve off my
shoulder and wipe my forehead. My chest heaves. I need a
drink, but when I suck on my hydration-system hose, I
find my water reservoir is empty.
I have a liter of water
in a Lexan bottle in my backpack, but it takes me a few
seconds to realize I won’t be able to sling my pack
off my right arm. I remove my camera from my neck and
put it on the boulder. Once I have my left arm free of
the pack strap, I expand the right strap, tuck my head
inside the loop, and pull the strap over my left
shoulder so it encompasses my torso. The weight of the
rappelling equipment, video camera, and water bottle
tugs the pack down to my feet, and then I step out of
the strap loop. Extracting the dark gray water bottle
from the bottom of my pack, I unscrew the top, and
before I realize the significance of what I’m doing, I
gulp three large mouthfuls of water and halt to pant for
breath. Then it hits me: In five seconds, I’ve guzzled
a third of my entire remaining water supply.
“Oh, damn, dude, cap
that and put it away. No more water.” I screw down the
lid tight, drop the bottle into the pack resting at my
knees, and take three deep breaths.
“OK, time to relax.
The adrenaline’s not going to get you out of here. Let’s
look this over, see what we got.” Amazingly, it’s
been half an hour since the accident. The decision to
get objective with my situation and stop rushing from
one brutish attempt to the next allows my energy to
settle down. This isn’t going to be over quickly, so
I need to start thinking. To do that, I need to be calm.
The first thing I decide to do is examine
the area where the boulder has my wrist pinned. Gravity
and friction have wedged the chockstone, now suspended
about four feet above the canyon floor, into a new set
of constriction points. At three spots, the opposing
walls secure the rock. On the downcanyon side of the
boulder, my hand and wrist form a fourth support where
they are caught in the grip of this horrific handshake.
I think, “My hand isn’t just stuck in there, it’s
actually holding this boulder off the wall. Oh, man,
I’m fucked.”
My headphones have
gotten knocked off my ears, but now, and in my calm, I
hear the crowd on the live CD cheering. The noise
evaporates as the disc winds to a stop, and the sudden
silence reinforces my situation. I am irreversibly
trapped, standing in the dimly lit bottom of a canyon,
unable to move more than a few inches up or down or side
to side. Compounding my physical circumstances, no one
who will suspect I am missing knows where I am. I
violated the prime directive of wilderness travel in
failing to leave a detailed trip plan with a responsible
person. Still eight miles from my truck, I am alone in
an infrequently visited place with no means to contact
anyone outside the fifty-yard throw of my voice.
Alone in a situation
that could very shortly prove to be fatal.
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