Right after I decided to give rock climbing a go, my colleague gave me a 'chilling effect' by showing me a book called 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place'. It is a well organized book, but more like a diary rather than a wisely written autobiography.

The 28-year-old author Aron Ralston is a zealous mountaineering fan graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in engineering, also major in French and minor in Piano performance. After graduation he joined Intel as a engineer and retired after five years for his dream adventure of reaching the summits of all states in U.S.

His memoir is starting from Utah's Blue John Canyon where his tragical accident occurred in April 2003. For a highly experienced mountaineer, a 30-mile day trip in the canyon is a relatively easy one. He wore a tshirt and a short, also packed up a small camel bag with water for hours and a digicamera bofore setting out solo. After a minor fall in the small space between the canyon walls, he found his right arm wedged by a boulder and hopelessly trapped. After two days he ran out of food and water later on, he had to live on his urine and suffered hypothermia and dehydration. With no hope of rescue, he made the inexplicable decision on the sixth day which he described as 'a slow act of suicide' to literally saw off his arm by his pocket knife. Although the arm had been gone after the first day, he rip through the tendon little by little but could not cut the bones, he had to bend the elbow to break it. Then he took a picture of the amputated arm and the boulder covered by his blood(the picture is included in the book). He climbed out and walked for several miles before he could finally get help from a family.

The story is an impressive reading but a grisly imagination. Some people admire his tenacity while others regard it as an action of madness. Aron Ralston seems to care nothing about the attitudes, with an ice axe as the new arm he has become a fearless reborn adventurer.

(http://www.aralston.com/)