Jon Hutt was doing logging work all alone in a remote Colorado forest when his 6-ton trailer fell onto his right foot.
The pain was excruciating, no one was around to hear his cries for help and he couldn’t free himself from the big piece of equipment. So he pulled out his 3-inch pocketknife and cut off his toes to get free.
“It hurt so bad,” the 61-year-old said. “I would cut for a while, and then I had to rest.”
Hutt then climbed into his tractor-trailer, his foot wrapped in a shirt, and began driving for help.
Hutt, who runs a crane business and does logging “for fun,” had gone into the woods by himself Aug. 19 to retrieve a pile of fallen aspen trees to cut for winter firewood. A trailer that was attached to his truck slipped and landed on his foot.
The wiry, 180-pound man said he began cutting off his toes about 30 minutes later, when he realized no one could hear his cries. Hutt said he couldn’t reach his cellphone, which was in his truck and out of range anyway.
Hutt had told his wife he would be back in several hours from the job, which was 50 miles away, but he did not know when she might start searching for him.
“I cut off my boot to see my foot, and once I realized how bad it was, I started cutting off my toes,” he said.
Once he freed himself, Hutt stopped the bleeding with the shirt and drove toward his home outside Montrose. He called for help once he was in cellphone range. An ambulance met him on the way.
Hutt said authorities retrieved his severed toes and took them to the hospital, but doctors said the toes couldn’t be reattached because they were too badly mangled.
“They told me there was no hope for them. They said there was nothing to attach the toes to,” he said.
Instead, doctors sewed his foot shut and wrapped it in bandages. Doctors warned him he may face more surgery.
Hutt, who has also worked as a miner, ran a saw mill, built log houses and grew up on a ranch, said his wife met him at the hospital and asked him if he was OK.
“There was no crying or whining,” he said.
His wife, Margaret, said she didn’t worry because she knew her husband might be gone for most of the day, but she started shaking when she got a message he left on her cellphone: “Please call. I cut my foot off.” She said she was only slightly relieved when she found out it was just his toes.
Hutt, released from the hospital Aug. 22, said he never thought about the 2003 ordeal of Aron Ralston, who amputated his right arm after it was pinned beneath a boulder in a Utah canyon, until someone reminded him about it at the hospital.
