Between a Rock and a Hard Place

I respect and admire Ralston for his experience. However, I thought the book was poorly written and boastful. It would have been much better with a humble approach. I didn't finish the book.

The initial part of this book is filled with stories of his narrow escapes. An encounter with a bear on an ill advised solo effort in the Teton wilderness, almost drowning in the Colorado river, a close call with an electrical storm on Humphries, and on and on.

The guy is pretty incredible but often his judgement seems to be suspect as far as what he was doing. I'm not sure how anyone can remember every detail of a climb or experience but then again, everyone has different abilities. His minute to minute account of the Blue John Canyon episode was chilling and like Alan Ellis, I did detect a form of boastfulness on Aron's part. Still, I found it an interesting read.

This persons experiences can make one think of your own close calls you may have had and to think before attempting something to far in left field. A great read with some interesting experiences Aaron went through.

Crazy guy should have never been alive to write a book with so many close calls. After seeing the interview on TV, he did seem kind of arrogant though, but after cheating death so many times...

I enjoyed this book all the way through. Although I agree with everyone above that it seems a lot of his outings seemed to involve unneccessary risks. It was interesting how he weaved the story from moments while he was stuck right to remembering some of his past experiences. When he began to hallucinate, it gave me a unique perspective of what someone may feel as they are inching closer to death. My wife thinks he is an idiot, and I cannot disagree. However he has accomplished feats that very few can even dream of. To cut off his own hand took some serious intestinal fortitude. To go on and finish his quest to climb the remaining Colorado 14ers in the winter with an artificial hand is quite amazing, regardless of how many risks he was taking. Overall if you look past his mistakes, and perceived arrogance, this can be a decent book to read.

and a friend kept recommending it to me for the whole summer so I finally picked it up and read it. Maybe some people can get something good from Ralston's experience but I was pretty much disgusted with his carefree bravado. Maybe it's because I have dealt with teenagers in my career and seen the results of this kind of continued behavior but I didn't like him as a person very much. He did a necessary act in cutting off his arm and it almost felt like he was growing up for awhile afterwards. We'll see over time!

I love climbing books. Until this book, I have never read a bad climbing book. This book was terrible, and the only respite was the occasional flashback to a previous experience. The movie was also a trainwreck.

I thought both the book and the movie were very good. Maybe he pushes the limits but I didn't find him arrogant.