Warren was trapped under a boulder for 40 hours on Mount Bowen. Here's what went through his head

Warren Macdonald had always been drawn to the great outdoors for what he describes as a "feeling of connection".

Now, trapped under a one-tonne boulder on the side of a remote mountain in Far North Queensland, he was having second thoughts.

"I remember at one time being confronted with this thought of, 'Hey, is this what you've been looking for? Is this connected enough for you?'," Warren recalls.

A few days earlier, the then 32-year-old Warren, who'd been working as a painter in Airlie Beach and the Whitsundays, decided it was time to take a road trip up north.

He needed to hit reset on his busy life, and nature always seemed to be the antidote.

So he set off for Hinchinbrook Island National Park.

"I've always explained Hinchinbrook as a bit like Jurassic Park. You've got this narrow channel with this pretty wild place just across on the other side of the channel," Warren says.

After boarding a ferry in Cardwell, Warren got off on the island and hiked all day until he arrived at Little Ramsay Bay.

There, he befriended Geert van Keulen, a 39-year-old backpacker from the Netherlands.

Geert asked him if he wanted to hike up to the summit of Mount Bowen the following morning.

Warren didn't take long to decide.

"Within five or 10 minutes, he came to me and said, 'Yeah, you're on'," Geert says.

Trapped in nature

The next morning, the two men took off. They thought it would take somewhere between eight to nine hours to get to the top of Mount Bowen. But the path wasn't clear and, later in the day, they realised they were lost.

When night fell, they decided to set up camp on a narrow rock ledge near a creek bed, under Warren's blue tarp. They weren't going to make it to the summit that night.

After dinner, Warren needed to relieve himself. However, the bush behind them was too thick to walk through, so he crossed the creek and climbed up a rock wall. He wanted to get as far away from their water source as possible.

"A refrigerator-sized piece of rock broke loose out of that wall and then just literally slammed me back down into the creek bed — and I mean slammed."

A one-tonne boulder had landed on Warren's legs, pinning him to the creek bed.

The accident occurred on the evening of April 9, 1997. It was a time before mobile phones were common and emergency radio beacons were easily accessible. He was in a remote landscape and in trouble.

The boulder was too heavy for Geert to lift off Warren's legs. So they decided it was best for Geert to trek down Mount Bowen at first light to seek help.

"I said, 'I reckon I can last another night, but I'm not sure I can do a second night'. And that was my last recollection of what I said to Geert," Warren says.

Getting the mayday out

It took Geert a day and a half to hike down to the northern end of Hinchinbrook Island. He was both physically and mentally exhausted, but he was getting closer to raising the alarm to help his friend.

The ferry didn't arrive until after midday on April 11, but the ferry operator couldn't get the mayday out to the mainland because his radio couldn't cover that distance.

Geert and the ferry operator Goodie had to come up with another plan.

When the Queensland rescue helicopter base in Cairns received the emergency phone call alerting them to a man who had been trapped under a boulder for more than 40 hours, there was an immediate sense of urgency. The crew knew they'd have to leave as soon as possible.

Rescue crewman Daniel Portefaix also knew they'd need heavy hydraulic lifting equipment to remove the boulder, so he called the airport fire officer to bring the equipment along.

They flew to where Warren was trapped. After Geert helped locate Warren, the crew were winched down into the creek bed.

"[The emergency medicine specialist] Chip was very concerned about the very low blood pressure that Warren had. And the most urgent thing to do was to give him fluids. At that stage is when Warren went in and out of consciousness. And that's when the real potential was for him not to survive the rescue," Daniel recalls.

While Warren had been pinned under the rock, toxins had formed in his legs. The crew knew that as the rock was lifted off, these toxins would enter the rest of Warren's body, which could be lethal. So Chip gave him a shot of adrenaline to keep his heart beating. It worked and he was soon winched into the helicopter.

Warren's next memory is of being wheeled into the Cairns Base Hospital around 9pm and having a conversation with a surgeon who told him he'd have to amputate both of his legs.

"I just said, you know, 'How high are we talking here?' And he said 'Above the knees'. And at that point I just said 'I'm out. I'm out. I don't want to know about it.' 

"[I] cried myself to sleep," he says.

The next day, he'd wake up to a whole new world.

While Warren was recovering in hospital, Geert visited him often.

At the time, Geert was also struggling with post traumatic stress disorder and survivor's guilt. He began sliding into a deep depression.

"I felt guilty that if it wasn't for me, he wouldn't have gone up that mountain," Geert says.

"Geert had struggled with survivor guilt for a long time afterwards," Warren adds.

"And I think that the big pieces of it was that he had asked me to go, and I had always kind of reassured him that, sure, he might have asked me to go but I mean, I made the decision to go and … we got through it at the end of the day — he saved my life."

Reconnecting with the outdoors

Almost a month later, after multiple operations, Warren was able to fly home to Melbourne to start rehabilitation.

He focused on getting stronger. In less than a year, he proved his strength by doing the Pier to Pub 1.2 kilometre swim in Lorne in Victoria, on January 10, 1998. He was even faster than he'd been a decade earlier before the accident.

"By the time I had swum Pier to Pub, I already had this idea, or a question if you like, 'Hey, can a guy with no legs climb a mountain?'"

Warren climbed Tasmania's Cradle Mountain just 10 months after his major operation.

"I mentioned … this feeling of connection that I'd always been chasing. And, for a while after Hinchinbrook, I thought that was something that was gone, that I was never really going to be able to feel that spiritual connection that I get from being outside," Warren says.

"And just sitting on top of Cradle there, I mean, the feeling was so strong — it's almost like being electrocuted. I felt like I had reclaimed a huge part of my life that I thought I'd lost forever."

Since reaching the summit of Cradle Mountain in 1998, Warren has continued to celebrate some incredible accomplishments.

He climbed Federation Peak in Tasmania a year later. Then in 2003, he became the first double above-the-knee amputee to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

He's also an author and renowned motivational speaker, and now lives in Canada with his partner Margo, who is an ice climber.

In the years after the accident, Warren has kept in touch with Geert. They've even been camping together again, this time in Arizona when Geert was cycling across the United States.

"I've often said, given the chance to go back [in time] I wouldn't go back, which kind of blows people away," Warren says.

"I'm not going to say that it's easy getting around with no legs. It's certainly not. But no, I wouldn't go back. I wouldn't change it — I've learned too much."