A Montana man has had a brush with death after slipping during a hike, impaling himself on his trekking pole, then walking 10 miles to reach an ambulance.
David Cifaldi, of Billings, Montana, was trekking with friends on the state’s highest mountain, Granite Peak, and was close to the summit when he slipped on a rock. As he told CBS News Affiliate KVTQ, “by the time I rolled over, I kind of knew something wasn’t right.”
His assessment was correct. Cifaldi had been speared by the pole under his left arm with an exit wound on his back, narrowly missing his vital organs. Cifaldi is an Intermountain Health nurse and kept his cool, saying, “Through my skin, I could feel the trekking pole. I knew it wasn’t deep, and I knew I could take deep breaths.”
His “nurse brain clicked on”
While normally this kind of situation would have warranted an emergency evacuation via helicopter, Cifaldi knew how costly it would be. He evaluated the situation and said his “nurse brain clicked on” and decided the best thing to do was a six-and-a-half-mile hike back along the route they’d just climbed, “As soon as I was able to self-assess and establish that this was not life-threatening right now, I was pretty convinced I was going to get off that mountain under my own power.”
They alerted authorities so there was an ambulance ready for them back on the road and, with assistance from his friends, he carefully made his way down the mountain. But, even in the middle of his own medical drama, Cifaldi was thinking of others.
His friend Jesse Ross explained that Cifaldi told them that he didn’t want any children seeing his gruesome injury: “There’s families, and he … had us hike ahead and warn people so young kids didn’t have to see such a gnarly wound. Just so selfless.”
As the GoFundMe set up to help pay for his medical bills says:
“We used a Garmin inReach to alert Stillwater County Search and Rescue, who staged a team in case his condition changed, and checked in every 30 minutes the whole way out. David navigated the plateau’s snowfields and boulder fields, made his way down past Mystic Lake, and reached the trailhead entirely under his own power — never once complaining, staying in remarkably high spirits.”
Cifaldi successfully reached the trailhead, where he was taken to the hospital. Doctors then carefully removed the trekking pole from his body. As he noted, “I feel very lucky. A couple inches the other way, and this would be a different story.” He is now recovering at home, but reportedly hopes to be caring for patients again soon.
Another story of mountain survival saw a 77-year-old French man plummet into a ravine, surviving for three days on the bottles of red wine he’d had with him.
Published: Jul 29, 2026 07:22 am