Even the slightest motion brought unbearable pain. A pain so bad I can’t describe. The endorphins and adrenaline had worn off. I tried to move, then recovered from the pain, then tried again, then recovered again. I tried for several hours – frustrated and in agony. I listened for any sound of life and screamed for help. I kept hoping someone would hear me or someone would come up the canyon. No one came. – from Danelle Ballengee’s Web diary, TrainingRX.com
Buena Vista – Of all the milestones in Danelle Ballengee’s 35-year life, today marks the five-month anniversary of the one she’s likely to cherish most.
Exactly 150 days have gone by since Ballengee, a world champion adventure racer and endurance athlete from Dillon, first met Bego Gerhart in a remote canyon outside of Moab. And although Gerhart – a 60-year-old member of the Grand County Search and Rescue team – has accrued a résumé of some acclaim through the years (including the retrieval of Aaron Ralston’s lost appendage), it wasn’t his reputation that most impressed Ballengee. It was his timing.
Gerhart was the first person Ballengee had seen in two days after she slipped on an ice-covered rock during a winter training run with her dog, Taz, on the Amasa Back Trail near her parttime home in Moab. Like the joyous evening encounter with Gerhart, the haunting memory of that fateful moment on Dec. 13, 2006, won’t soon be forgotten.
Scrambling up a steep, off-trail side- slope some 6 miles into her run, Ballengee stepped on a patch of black ice she never saw and fell victim to gravity’s pull, rag-dolling over a pair of rock ledges before being launched into a free fall for the final 20 feet of her 60- foot cliffside plummet. Landing square on her feet, the impact shattered her pelvis and left her in a crumpled heap on the cold desert sandstone.
Ballengee used the adrenaline coursing through her veins to drag her listless legs through the canyon for five hours, crawling only a quarter-mile before succumbing to the anguish and massive internal bleeding that soon displaced it. The sky dark and temperatures well below freezing, she collapsed on her back beside a pool of silted snowmelt. There, she and Taz laid awake for an anxious eternity that lingers to this day.
“Sometimes I have trouble sleeping,” Ballengee said after her first foray back to the sport of adventure racing Saturday. “For a while it was really bad. When I closed my eyes, I would think about the fall. And then I’d open them and I couldn’t stop thinking about laying there and having to stay awake with my eyes open the whole time. So it was like I couldn’t win, and I’d kind of have an anxiety attack. But it’s getting better.”
Even as she lost a third of her blood to internal bleeding, the three-time Primal Quest adventure race winner and Pikes Peak Marathon champion relied on her endurance training, outdoor acumen and superior physical conditioning to maintain the routine that would keep her alive. Wearing only a hat, thin fleece jacket, polypro shirt and silk base layer above a pair of baggy running pants, she tapped her toes, wiggled her fingers inside her pants and did an endless series of “crunches” by lifting her head for more than 14 hours throughout the frigid night to keep her core warm and ward off frostbite. Sleep meant certain death.
“Adventure racing helped a lot to train me to stay alive,” Ballengee said. “If it wasn’t for my condition at the time, I would have died.”
Alive and still strong enough to scream the next morning, she spent the next 10 hours yelling for help. Still none came.
Remarkable return
The second night seemed even longer and colder. The stars were not stars but stripes in the sky. I thought about my family, my friends, my life. I thought about a lot of stuff that night – I was a changed person. I didn’t want to die. I couldn’t die. I had to fight. At that moment, life had a new meaning to me and a newfound respect. – Ballengee’s Web diary
A common, if somewhat distasteful, inside joke among elite-level adventure racers refers to the female member of a typical four-person coed team as “mandatory gear.” The sport is unique in that it essentially requires women to compete at the same level as men in some of the most physically demanding endurance challenges dreamed up.
Named “adventure racer of the year” three times since 2002, Ballengee has long been a coveted piece of equipment.
“We don’t make more (money) racing with the guys, we just suffer more trying to keep up with them,” Ballengee said. “That’s probably why you don’t see so many female adventure racers competing into their 40s. We are pushing ourselves at a little higher percent of our max and it’s probably a bit more straining.”
As if the survival epic that played out last December was not convincing enough, Ballengee further demonstrated the determination that defines her character at Saturday’s 60-mile multisport Adventure Xstream Adventure Race Series event in Buena Vista. Less than five months after a six-hour surgery to install two titanium plates in the back of her pelvis – and just more than two months after ditching her wheelchair – Ballengee won the 12-hour race’s solo female division as its only competitor.
“I must have scared everybody else away,” she joked from the finish line. “I was pretty psyched. I mean, I did it, and I did better than a lot of other people. But I realize I’ve still got a long way to go.”
Numbness from the frostbite in her toes still lingers and nerve damage to her right calf prevents her from lifting her heel off the ground or standing on the pedals of her mountain bike. A genuine fear of falling rears its head around the ropes course and singletrack bike trails.
But patience has never been Ballengee’s calling card. She established the Colorado 14ers female speed ascent record by scaling 55 14,000-plus peaks in a mere 14 days, 14 hours and 49 minutes. So it came as little surprise to anyone when she registered her one- woman team under the name “How’s This For Rehab” and took her place at the starting line Saturday.
“We’re a little nervous,” race organizer Jenny Newcomer said as the race got underway. Like so many in the close-knit racing community that has risen to support Ballengee since her ordeal, Newcomer and her husband, Will, have become like extended family. Eleven and a half hours later, she greeted Ballengee with a hug at the finish before adding, “She’s amazing.”
Survival saga
A ball of blood had formed around my midsection. …Taz knew something was really wrong by now. I told him I loved him and asked him to go get help. … The fatigue was overwhelming; I had been awake for over 60 hours. I lay there and took some deep breaths. Perhaps, I thought, I should fall asleep and die before the cold of the night made for a more painful death. I cried.
Several factors must fall into place to win an expedition-length adventure race, a feat Ballengee has accomplished more than most. The multiday epics often described as “sufferfests” are complex combinations of superhuman endurance, varied skill sets, masochistic sleep deprivation, steeled will and, yes, even a bit of luck.
The same could be said of Ballengee’s canyonland survival saga. As she lay dying in the cold, lonely canyon, she had no way of knowing the sequence of fortunate events transpiring on the brink of another seemingly pitiless sunset – beginning with the concerns of her 76-year-old neighbor, Dorothy Rossignol, who phoned Ballengee’s parents in Evergreen when she failed to return home for a second night, and culminating with Taz running all the way back to her truck on that third day, where he managed to both elude and entice the gathered search party into following him, Lassie-style, back up the trail.
Remembering a phone conversation with Ballengee from a few weeks prior, Detective Craig Shumway of the Moab Police Department had taken it upon himself to find her truck at the Amasa Back trailhead on his lunch hour.
“If it wasn’t for him, Search and Rescue wouldn’t have been called. And then there was Taz, of course,” Ballengee said. The dog’s lifesaving efforts earned him the SPCA’s National Hero Dog Award last week, complete with a trip to Los Angeles to receive it after a day on the beach.
“There are just so many little things that fell into place that allowed me to be alive right now. I got to the hospital and learned that most people with injuries like mine die within eight to 10 hours because of internal bleeding. Being on that cold rock, as miserable as it was, I think it probably slowed the bleeding a little bit, like icing it. Just being able to get to that little puddle of water. If I didn’t have water for three days, I don’t know if I would have made it. I just feel pretty lucky.”
As it has in the past, luck, skill and determination conspired to keep Ballengee on top. And if history can be trusted as a barometer of the future, it won’t be too long before she rediscovers her form as an endurance athlete and reaches that summit once more. But if that barometer should fall, she remains forever grateful for another adventure.
“So glad to see you”
Bego was his name. He rode his ATV to the flat rock next to where I had been laying for 52 hours. He approached and I said, “I’m so glad to see you.” “I’m so glad to see you,” he returned. Tears came down both our eyes this time. Taz wagged his tail and sounded a whimpering cry of joy as he licked Bego’s hand. … Just before dark, the helicopter found a landing spot. I was given a second chance for life.
Swift recovery
Danelle Ballengee returned to competition this past weekend from an injury that occurred in December. She started adventure racing in 1998 and has numerous achievements, including 2002 adventure racer of the year. A look at her return:
Dec. 13, 2006 – Fell while solo training on the Amasa Back Trail near Moab, shattering her pelvis.
Dec. 15 – Found by Grand County Search & Rescue and taken by helicopter to a hospital in Grand Junction.
Dec. 19 – Underwent six-hour surgery to repair pelvis at Denver General Hospital.
Jan. 1, 2007 – Discharged from hospital in a wheelchair.
Jan. 25 – Began aquatic therapy and pool running.
March 1 – Cleared by doctors to begin walking.
March 3 – Returned to wheelchair because of pain from walking attempts.
April 15 – Began jogging/walking up to 3 miles.
May 1 – Completed 22-mile bike ride around Dillon Reservoir.
May 12 – Completed 12-hour Adventure Xstreams adventure race in
Buena Vista, winning women’s solo division (13 hours after 1 1/2-hour orienteering time penalty).
Today – Five-month anniversary of her rescue.
– Staff writer Scott Willoughby can be reached at 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
