A bubbly waitress with blond-streaked bobbed hair and an affable giggle puts a huge plate of fried ice cream in front Aron Ralston, with four spoons.
“No, send those back. Just one spoon,” Ralston said. “I’m not sharing this. If anyone else wants some, they can order their own.”
Ralston, 29, the climber who amputated his arm after being pinned in the Utah desert for six days under an 800-pound boulder in 2003 has a voracious appetite, and not just for fried ice cream. Since surviving the ordeal, Ralston seems hungrier than ever for adventure and challenge wherever he can find it, outdoors and otherwise. The abridged list of his accomplishments the past two years: He wrote a book (“Between a Rock and a Hard Place,” which made The New York Times’ bestsellers list). He completed his goal of climbing all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks solo in winter. He ran the Leadville 100 last year. He skied in the Grand Traverse, a grueling overnight cross country trek from Crested Butte to Aspen. He made several television appearances, including his second on the “Late Show with David Letterman.” He gave inspirational speeches. He went surfing in Costa Rica. He helped design several attachments for his mechanical arm for various outdoor pursuits, including rock climbing, telemark skiing and mountaineering. And he caught a whole bunch of live music shows, including Jazz Fest in New Orleans, and several stops on The String Cheese Incident’s ongoing tour.
Today, he’s hungry because he completed the Hardrock Hundred Mile Endurance Run in 45 hours, 55 minutes earlier that morning. He guessed he ate about 40,000 calories during the race, eating everything he could get his hands on.
The 100-mile trail running event, now in its 12th year, is a big loop through the San Juans. It starts in Silverton and goes through Sherman, Ouray, Telluride, Ophir and back to Silverton. The average elevation is 11,186 feet with a low point of 7,680 feet and a high point of 14,048 feet at Handies Peak. The total elevation gain is 33,000 feet.
Sitting over quesadillas and a fishbowl-sized margarita (his favorite), Ralston hardly looks like he just came off a grueling two-day jaunt through the San Juan Mountains. He has uncontainable energy and always looks like he just stuck his finger into an electrical socket. His hair is long and unruly. His eyes blaze with intent, humor and boyish excitement. He wears wire-rim glasses that give him a mad scientist look, like he might be cooking up some bizarre experiment in his basement as we speak.
“Wait,” he says to the waitress. “You have to wear this.” He takes off the medal around his neck. It’s a huge, heavy pendant on a big blue and white ribbon. He gestures for her to put it on. He wears his custom-made prosthetic with a huge clamp on the end of it. She bows her head toward him and he ceremoniously awards her the medal. The prosthetic is conspicuous. It’s large and black and worn around his shoulders on a harness.
“Let me explain to you what this medal is,” he says proudly. “It’s for finishing the Hardrock Hundred Race in Telluride. … I want everyone to take turns wearing it.”
His charm does the trick. “Wow,” she says, her face slightly flushed. “I feel so special now.” She clutches the spoons in her hand and shakes them at him. “I’d like to see you finish that dessert by yourself,” she says. Uh-oh. A challenge.
“Oh, I’ll finish it, all right,” he retorts. And he does.
I ask him if he’s had a chance to sleep. “Oh, yeah, I grabbed a nap this afternoon for about four hours,” he says with a shrug. Also a runner, I ask him a million questions, trying to get some sense of what it would be like to run for almost two days straight.
I start to wonder if this guy is some kind of alien. He’s one of those people who is so over the top it’s hard to fathom how his mind works, how his body works, how he’s able to do what he does. He’s fun to talk about, and since his accident and subsequent public persona, fun to criticize. Sitting over a casual dinner with friends, though, one thing is perfectly clear: He’s hungry for more.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
