Aron Lee Ralston (born October 27, 1975) is an American mountaineer, mechanical engineer, and motivational speaker, known for surviving a canyoneering accident by cutting off part of his own right arm.

[2][3] The incident is documented in Ralston's autobiography Between a Rock and a Hard Place and is the subject of the 2010 film 127 Hours in which he is portrayed by James Franco.

[3]: 72 Ralston began working towards his goal of climbing all of Colorado's "fourteeners"—peaks over 14,000 feet (4,270 m) altitude, of which there are 59—solo and during winter (a feat that had never been recorded before).

In 2003, he was caught in a Grade 5 avalanche on Resolution Peak, Colorado with his skiing partners Mark Beverly and Chadwick Spencer.

After three days of trying to lift and break the boulder, the dehydrated and delirious Ralston prepared to amputate his trapped arm at a point on the mid-forearm in order to escape.

He did not expect to survive the night, but as he attempted to stay warm he began hallucinating and had a vision of himself playing with a future child while missing part of his right arm.

[3]: 248 [7] After waking at dawn the following day he discovered that his arm had begun to decompose due to the lack of circulation, and became desperate to tear it off.

The painful process took an hour, during which time he used tubing from a CamelBak as a tourniquet, taking care to leave major arteries until last.

However, after 6 miles (9.7 km) of hiking, he encountered a family on vacation from the Netherlands; Eric and Monique Meijer and their son Andy, who gave him food and water and hurried to alert the authorities.

According to television presenter Tom Brokaw,[11] it took 13 men, a winch and a hydraulic jack to move the boulder so that Ralston's arm could be removed.

[12] On July 21, 2003, Ralston appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, and his story was featured by GQ's "Men of the Year" and Vanity Fair's "People of 2003".

[12] Later that month, Ralston's story was featured on a two-hour edition of Dateline NBC called "Desperate Days in Blue John Canyon".

[12] On September 28, 2004, he appeared on the radio program The Bob Rivers Show and described his ordeal as "six days of terror and horror.

"[14] After his recovery he continued to climb mountains, including Aconcagua in 2005,[15] and in 2008, Ojos del Salado in Chile and Monte Pissis in Argentina.

[16] In 2005, Ralston became the first person to climb all of the 59 ranked and/or named of Colorado's 'fourteeners' solo in winter, a project he started in 1997 and resumed after the amputation in Bluejohn Canyon.

[28][29][30] In 2011, Ralston was a contestant on the U.S. television show Minute To Win It, where he won $125,000 for Wilderness Workshop,[31] made a cameo on The Simpsons in "Treehouse of Horror XXII",[32][33] took part in the reality show Alone in the Wild, where he had to 'survive' in the wild with a video camera and a bag of supplies,[34] and delivered the commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon University for the graduating class of 2011.

[40] On May 4, 2007, Ralston appeared at the Swiss Economic Forum and gave a speech about how he "lost his hand, but gained his life back."