Is it okay to make fun of Aron Ralston yet?

[cj001f]

Another thing seperating him from "thousands of better climbers" is the fact that he is the only person alive in the world to solo every one of Colorado's 14ers in calender winter - note the calender caveat. Lou Dawson skiied them all ten years ago. So, combined that with the fact that he is one of very few people in the world to survive x days sutck alone in a slot canyon, cut off their own arm and walk five miles out, recover and have some thoughtful things to say on the subject, the fact that some people want to pay to hear what he has to say doesn't strike me as odd. Paris Hilton makes millions a year flaunting her snatch and saying abolutely nothing so what is the big deal with Ralston making a few hundred thousand off a book and some lectures?

I don't get why people care about Paris, Nick, Jessica, Brad or Angelina either. "calender winter" is silly, but so is caring about some arbitrary agglomeration of peaks. I don't find it interesting, others do, but the worlds a fucked up place like that.

[cj001f]

I know. There couldn't possibly be any value in hearing about someone's experience as they faced death for 5 days. Surely there couldn't be enough of a demand to hear something like this to command those figures.

Facing death for days. Truly untrod ground in climbing literature

[Viva]

I'm not sure if my sarcasm radar is broken, but if not you might need to excuse yourself from this debate if you were not aware that CO has any fourteen thousand foot peaks within the state.

Yes, Coco, I was aware that Colorado has more 14ers that the rest of the US combined- in fact, it was the very first thing we were taught in Organic Chemistry. I was merely adding to the debate over how many total 14ers there actually were. More, anyone just doing the Colorado 14ers while eschewing those in California and Washington just isn't core.

[The AD]

Compare this guy and his accomplishments to Jamie Pierre, whom half of the board wants to give a rim job, and tell me which one is more worthy of admiration or respect.

Why do you think Ralston deserves more respect? Hucking yourself off cliffs and climbing mountains solo in winter are both high risk activities that could get you killed. Both guys believed those risks were worth it and did these things souly to fulfill some personal desire. It's not like they're out there trying to cure cancer or something.

Also I want to point out that, as an advocate of the metric system, I believe we should be talking about summiting "4267ers" rather than the ridiculously archaic "14ers."

[smolakian]

The dude had to CUT OFF HIS OWN ARM!!! Shit, after that experience I'd try to parlay it into anything I could.
On second thought, I don't even know if I'd have the balls to cut off my own arm.

[Viva]

On second thought, I don't even know if I'd have the balls to cut off my own arm.

Now, suppose you got your balls trapped by that bolder?

[Danno]

The dude had to CUT OFF HIS OWN ARM!!! Shit, after that experience I'd try to parlay it into anything I could.
On second thought, I don't even know if I'd have the balls to cut off my own arm.

Yeah, I would have died, no doubt.

I think the guy is somewhat of an idiot, but like I said before, gotta give him credit for parlaying it into a source of income. If people have a problem with it, they should have a problem with society, not with him.

[steve]

Paris Hilton makes millions a year flaunting her snatch and saying abolutely nothing so what is the big deal with Ralston making a few hundred thousand off a book and some lectures that have some substance and interesting history behind them?

That is something I hadn't thought of. Yes I know we can't understand why a no-talent bag who can't even keep her phone secure like Paris is making millions - but even if you lump aron in the same category (aron a no-talent bag?), at the very least it promotes safety and awareness in the mountains - and I think these kids who have nothing better to do than to play x-box and hang out in malls can use some influence by ralston rather than brittany.


on a lighter note, let's check in and see what maddox has to say about the issue.

Aron Ralston:

If you're asking yourself "who the hell is Aron Ralston," you'd better step back and re-evaluate your life right now. Ralston, the living legend, was hiking up a cliff in southern Utah (probably to do something manly like take a leak off of it), when a giant boulder fell on him, pinning his arm against the ground. Most people would have just died, but did he surrender his life to a mere giant life-threatening boulder? Hell no. He just kept getting angrier and angrier until he finally CUT OFF HIS ARM WITH A DULL KNIFE. This after he literally chiseled away at the bone so he could snap his arm off and free himself from underneath the rock. Yes, you read that correctly, he cut off his own arm with a dull pocket knife.

Since I don't have any credible sources of what happened next, I'm going to go off of the next best thing: hearsay and rumor. After he cut off his arm, he jumped off the cliff and broke his fall with his face, just because he's that tough. Then he got ambushed by a tribe of angry Indians, caught an arrow in his heart, pulled it out and killed all the warriors with it. On his way back a buffalo crossed his path so what did Ralston do? He head-butt it to death, then he found its offspring and broke their ribs just for pissing him off. Then he chopped down a tree with his undoubtedly large penis, built a raft out of it and rafted down the green river. That's the damn truth--more or less. Aron Ralston is a real man and one tough son of a bitch. He deserves utmost respect for being such a badass.

(taken from http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse....cgi?u=real_men)

[leroy jenkins]

If I counted right, Alaska has 19.

The list.

I think you're being sarcastic about the AK thing, but if not, I just thought I'd point out that its kinda silling to counts Ak's since there are tons of unnamed peaks up there.

[leroy jenkins]

If people have a problem with it, they should have a problem with society, not with him.

Amen to that.

[cj001f]

Amen to that.

What a bunch of buck passing bullshit. No one made him go on Leno, he chose to go on Leno. He didn't have to write a book, he chose to write one. He got money, fame and everything that goes withit. I'd have probably done the same. Just because everybody does it doesn't make it good, noble, or interesting. Usually just the opposite.

[iceman]

I think you're being sarcastic about the AK thing, but if not, I just thought I'd point out that its kinda silling to counts Ak's since there are tons of unnamed peaks up there.

No, I just counted up the number of peaks they had on the list I linked to. I'm pretty sure they put all the AK 14ers on there, not just the ones that happened to have names.

[Danno]

What a bunch of buck passing bullshit. No one made him go on Leno, he chose to go on Leno. He didn't have to write a book, he chose to write one. He got money, fame and everything that goes withit. I'd have probably done the same. Just because everybody does it doesn't make it good, noble, or interesting. Usually just the opposite.

I never said he was good, noble, or even interesting. What I said, and what leroy agreed with, was that there's nothing wrong with him parlaying his accident into a career. He didn't force Leno to put him on, he didn't force people to buy his book. If you lost an arm, and someone said "hey, give you $200k to write a book about it", what the hell is wrong with writing the book? If people say, "hey, give you $10k to talk at our conference", what's the problem with saying "hell yeah!"?

The problem, if there is one, is that people are willing to pay him that money. There's no problem (and no buck passing) with him just accepting it.

[shmerham]

I think you're being sarcastic about the AK thing, but if not, I just thought I'd point out that its kinda silling to counts Ak's since there are tons of unnamed peaks up there.

Are you also being sarcastic? Who cares whether they have names or not? Does that make their elevation irrelevant? AK might have tons of unnamed peaks, but they don't have many over 14k. The peaks are prominent, but most are coastal and thus don't have the elevations of the rockies. A 7k ft mountain in Alaska is pretty huge.

[cj001f]

I never said he was good, noble, or even interesting.

I'm of the school of thought that classified the absence of those qualities as bad. Because someone offers you something doesn't mean you have to, or should, take it.

[gramps]

Because someone offers you something doesn't mean you have to, or should, take it.

Oh what bullshit. He won the adventure sports lottery (mainstream fame and the money that goes with it), there's no shame in going in to claim the prize. He suffered greatly and is now an amputee, what's possibly wrong with turning it into something positive? Yeah it means people will write some cheeseball articles about you, but you cash in and get to do nothing but play for the rest of your life. What the fuck do you people want him to do? Go sulk in a corner somewhere?

[Blurred]

It's not that he's a bad guy, I just don't see why society should reward him with 5 figure speaking fees and a bestselling book when the only thing differentiating him from thousands of better climbers is selfamputation. Joe's books were more interesting/insightful. At least to me. I'm also a cynic who discounts acheivments when someone has a surplus of time and money on their hands (cough Dick Bass)


I thought of your post as condscending, sarcastic and blusterous.

if you self amputate your head, I'll totally buy your book.

[cj001f]

if you self amputate your head, I'll totally buy your book.

There's 5,177 posts it'll be more interesting than.

[Blurred]

There's 5,177 posts it'll be more interesting than.

we're waitng. GIT ER DONE!!!!!!!

[cj001f]

He won the adventure sports lottery (mainstream fame and the money that goes with it)

We play different games, clearly.

[freshies]

As for the larger question, I just read the aarticle by Aron Ralston in the recent outside and I came away from it with a better impression of him than I had before. I have not read his book and don't plan on it, but he lays out in a very clear manner his progression from backcontry and alpine newbie to a guy who pulled off a very impressive and dedicated mountaineering feat -- soloing every CO 14er in winter alone. the last 20 or so w/ one arm. In contrast to the dick waving that goes on around here after skiing a groomer at loveland on a tuesday, or just contemplating skiing a groomer on tuesday, that is pretty impressive. I will agree that the cover proclaiming him the "ultimate survivor" and the general tendency to overhype this or any other story (i.e. laird hamilton) can become a bit tedious, that is reflective of the need to sell magazines, not of Aron Ralston's attitude, abilities, etc.

Prior to reading the article my impression of the guy was a reckless or clueless guy who has had more than his fair share of accidents, but upon further reflection I think that he had a bad outcome on one trip, something that could have happened to me and pretty much anyone on this board any number of times How many times this winter did we have people on this board post "close calls" in regards to avalanches? While any of these are certainly open to monday morning QBing and analysis of the wisdom of finding oneself in that situation, we aren't in the habit of savaging someone for making a mistake, so why should the same be said for Aron Ralston? Same exact thing as getting stuck in a canyon in UT. What the guy deserves credit for is having the wherewithal to figure a way out of it and to continue on afterwards and have the balls to keep climbing and use the experience to further his own passion for the mountains. Also, he deserves credit for honestly telling how he got to his current situation and admitting to his mistakes along the way. How many people here were born with the inherent knowledge of how to ski, climb, etc.? While many would want to project the image that they are bad asses and always have been, Ralston (in a rather funny way) relates his JONG moves (six layers of cotton first time up Quandary, for example) and tells how he actually LEARNED with help from others something about being proficient in the mountains. For a bunch of people who like to talk about "the stoke" and dream of ways to make their dreams of living a recreation centered lifestyle a reality, it seems pretty fucking pathetic to bag on Aron Ralston for doing just that.

Compare this guy and his accomplishments to Jamie Pierre, whom half of the board wants to give a rim job, and tell me which one is more worthy of admiration or respect.

well said, well said...

[Karl Stall]

For one thing, he seems to be a gifted writer.

I met him in the airport about a month ago and he could not have been a nicer, more humble person.

[Phatstix]

I heard that he's a good climber. I wonder if he can surf? Oh, that gig is already taken. My bad.