He rappelled down a 65-foot (approximately 20-meter) drop using a rope system that typically requires two hands. He managed it.
Then he hiked.
The hike out of Blue John Canyon took him through the canyon system toward the Horseshoe Canyon area, the distance varying in different accounts between five and seven miles. He had his CamelBak pack serving as a makeshift sling for what remained of his arm. He was moving through desert terrain in the heat of a May afternoon, losing blood, in a physical state that should not have been compatible with the distance he covered.
He encountered a Dutch family — Eric and Monique Meijer and their teenage son Andy — on the trail. The family was on vacation, hiking through the Horseshoe Canyon area. They provided him with food and water, and they helped hail the helicopter that had been part of the search operation.
The rescue helicopter found him approximately four hours after the amputation — four hours in which he had moved from the pinch point in the slot canyon to a location accessible by helicopter. He was airlifted to Allen Memorial Hospital in Moab, Utah, where he reportedly walked unaided off the helicopter. He was subsequently transferred to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado, for the surgical work needed to prepare his arm for a prosthesis.
It is important to give the Meijer family appropriate credit in this account, because the narrative of the entrapment sometimes collapses the distinction between the moment of self-liberation and the moment of rescue. Ralston did not walk out of the desert to civilization entirely alone. He freed himself. He moved himself toward help. But the help came from specific people — a Dutch family on vacation who responded to an obviously dire situation with the food and presence and practical assistance that a person in extremis required. They flagged the helicopter. Their role in his survival was direct and significant.