The Man Who Walked Off a Mountain Impaled

David Cifaldi went into the Montana wilderness for a hike and came back out as a human shish kebab. Outdoor Life reported that while tackling the notoriously brutal Granite Peak, the Billings native took a nasty spill on some loose rocks and managed to impale himself front-to-back on his own trekking pole.

Fortunately, Cifaldi is a wound-care nurse. Instead of panicking, he flipped on his “nurse brain,” verified he wasn’t dying, and decided he’d rather walk 10 miles back to civilization with a pole sticking out of his torso than wait for an expensive helicopter. His hiking buddies even acted as a hype-crew/warning track, walking ahead of him on the popular trail to make sure unsuspecting families and small children didn’t get traumatized by the sight of a walking medical anomaly.

The Aftermath:

• The Extraction: A Billings surgeon used a clever “pole out, drain in” swap technique to remove the equipment.
• The Damage: Missed all major organs by mere inches.
• The Future: Cifaldi is recovering fine, backed by a buddy’s GoFundMe campaign, and already plans to conquer the peak again—this time, strictly hands-free.

^{Feature image via GoFundMe}