## The First Attempts: Tools, Ropes, and the Limits of Strength
An engineer by training does not stand still in the face of a physical problem. Ralston’s initial response to the entrapment was systematic and methodical — an application of the mechanical thinking that Carnegie Mellon had formalized and that years of alpine problem-solving had reinforced.
He had a multi-tool — a cheap device bundled with a flashlight, not a premium brand instrument. Its blade was small, approximately two inches long, and far from sharp. He began using it to chip at the boulder and at the canyon wall, working to create some give in the geometry that held him. The sandstone did not yield meaningfully. The work produced chips and dust, not the significant reduction in pressure that would allow him to free his hand.
He rigged his climbing ropes to the chockstone and attempted to use mechanical advantage to lift the boulder off his arm. He improvised anchor systems in the limited space available, applying the technical rigging skills that canyoneering requires. The boulder, an estimated 800 pounds of sandstone, did not move. He rearranged the rigging and tried again. The boulder, according to his account as reported in the Outside magazine article from August 2003, did not move even microscopically.
The attempts at mechanical liberation occupied the first day and portions of the days that followed. Ralston was not passive during these hours; he worked at the problem with the energy available to someone who still had food, water, and the physical reserves that a fit twenty-seven-year-old mountaineer possesses in early captivity. But the work was futile, and he knew it. No tool he had, no rigging system he could construct in the space available, was capable of moving a boulder that size off his arm.