Three days after the rescue, a team of park rangers returned to the canyon to retrieve Ralston’s severed arm. The operation required thirteen men, a hydraulic jack, and a grip hoist — essentially a winch system — to move the boulder. The task took approximately an hour. The arm was recovered, cremated, and Ralston later returned to the site to scatter the ashes.
The size of the retrieval effort gives some sense of the forces that had been arrayed against Ralston for five days. The boulder that required thirteen people and mechanical assistance to move had been pinning his arm against a canyon wall for over 127 hours.
## The Medical Reality: Recovery and Adaptation
Aron Ralston arrived at Allen Memorial Hospital in Moab having lost approximately 25 percent of his blood volume. Over the course of his entrapment, he had also lost approximately 40 pounds of body weight — a measure of the combined effects of dehydration, caloric deprivation, and the physical demands of his situation. He was listed in serious condition in intensive care.
The medical team at Allen Memorial stabilized him before the transfer to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction. At St. Mary’s, he underwent the surgeries needed to prepare the remaining portion of his right arm for a prosthetic fitting. The process of fitting and learning to use a prosthetic limb is extended and demanding, requiring significant occupational therapy and adaptation.
Doctors who reviewed his case told him something that recontextualized the decision he had made in the canyon: even if he had been found and freed without having amputated, the arm would likely not have been saved. The prolonged compression had caused severe soft-tissue damage. The blood supply had been cut off for so long that recovery of the limb would not have been feasible. The decision he made, in other words, was not simply the decision that saved his life. It was likely the only medically reasonable outcome regardless, given the extent of the damage already done.