Hiker impaled on trekking pole hikes six miles off Montana peak

David Cifaldi, a 32-year-old Billings nurse, hiked about 10 miles off Granite Peak after a trekking pole pierced his torso during a climb with two friends. The escape turned on a hard choice: keep moving through remote country in pain, or wait for a helicopter in terrain that leaves little margin for delay.

Cifaldi and his companions were on Montana’s highest peak, a mountain listed at 12,803 feet in one account and 12,799 feet in another, when he slipped on loose rocks near 11,800 feet after about seven hours of hiking. The pole went through his body and was described as lodged into his left latissimus dorsi muscle below his armpit and out through his back. Instead of stopping the climb for a technical rescue, Cifaldi and the two friends made their way out together over roughly six hours.

The route mattered as much as the injury. Granite Peak rises in the Beartooth Mountains and the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, a place known for loose rock, long approaches and difficult exits. That remoteness is part of why self-rescue often becomes the first line of survival on the state’s hardest high point, where outside help can take time to reach a stranded climber even under good conditions.

Cifaldi’s nursing background also appears to have shaped the outcome. One account said he relied on his medical training as he came down the mountain, a detail that helps explain how he could keep moving after a puncture wound that could have become far more serious if he had lost blood, mobility or the ability to think clearly at altitude. His companions gave him the support system that made the walk out possible, and the fact that all three were still together mattered as much as any piece of gear.

The mountain’s history underscores the risk. American Alpine Club records show a prior accident on Granite Peak’s east ridge standard route on September 5 of an unspecified year, when two falls left one person dead. For climbers heading into Montana’s highest country, Cifaldi’s exit from the peak was a reminder that the difference between catastrophe and survival can come down to terrain, partners, pace and the ability to keep self-rescue moving when the mountain has already taken a toll.