Limbs of Steel

Aron Ralston received national attention in 2003 for courageously self-amputating his arm below the elbow after a boulder fell on it, pinning him for five days inside Utah´s Blue John Canyon. Since then, the 30-year-old Colorado-based mountaineer has become the first person to solo climb all 59 of his state´s 14,000-foot peaks in winter. He also recently summitted South America´s tallest mountain, 23,000-foot Mount Aconcagua-all without the use of his dominant arm. In its place, Ralston wears a specially modified arm made by Hanger, a leading prosthetics company in Maryland. Hanger added sticky rubber to the arm so Ralston could keep friction against the rock, and a harness system to assist in the bent-elbow positioning important for climbing. Ralston then worked with Boulder-based prosthetic company, TRS, to develop one-of-a-kind hand units that plug into and release from the arm with the push of a button. For mountaineering and ice climbing, Ralston uses an ice ax attachment consisting of an aluminum shaft and chrome-molded ice climbing tools. More recently, Ralston designed a hand-unit device made with mixed climbing components and coated in urethane specifically for rubbing against rock. Though both were designed to help Ralston up mountains, neither tool is mechanical-they are static, body powered devices he must swing and place the whole way up. (aralston.com)