If you want an example of a guy who has earned his Man Card for life, without question, look up a hiker named David Cifaldi. This is a guy who was, during a mishap while hiking in a place called Froze-to-Death Plateau in Montana, slipped and fell, impaling himself on a hiking staff. That has to hurt.
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Now, most people would have stopped and called for an evacuation. Not David Cifaldi. He knew he needed medical attention, and he and his companions knew they were 10 miles from their vehicle. So, Mr. Cifaldi made a decision: He would (and did) walk out. That, you have to admit, is pretty badass.
The 44-inch (112-centimeter) steel-tipped pole passed through the flesh beneath Cifaldi’s left arm, missing any vital organs, and protruded from his back. After conferring with his friends — and considering the high cost of a helicopter rescue — Cifaldi knew who would save him: himself.
“I was like, ‘We’ve got to get off this mountain.’ And they’re both like, ‘I don’t know about that,’” Cifaldi said of his friends’ initial reaction. “I’m pretty confident this is outside my chest wall. ’Tis but a flesh wound.”
The 32-year-old nurse, who works in wound care at a hospital in Billings, Montana, did a self-assessment. He was alert. There was little pain or blood. And the pole wasn’t moving. The group used a satellite-based communication device, a Garmin inReach, to contact local authorities and inform them of their plan to self-rescue.
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Best to have oversight and an evac plan in place, sure; but David Cifaldi walked those 10 miles himself. He did have one advantage, in being a medical professional himself, and he was able to carefully evaluate his own injury. It’s still pretty impressive. Being impaled with a hiking staff has to hurt like the dickens, flesh wound or not.
And bear in mind where that injury was: Right in the muscles of the side. Sure, it missed any vital organs, or the tale may have ended very differently, but that’s a part of your body that moves every time you move: Every step, every turn. But he walked out.
After more than six hours in which they traveled about 10 miles (16 kilometers) and descended roughly 5,000 feet (1,500 meters), the group reached a trailhead where one of them, Cifaldi’s friend Jesse Ross, had parked a vehicle.
“The only reason it was possible at all was his confidence,” Ross recalled. “Who are we to say anything? He’s the medical person. Our job is just to support at that point.”
The only thing one can add to that is, they done good.
People in general can be tougher than they think. One of the more common things you hear from military folks about their initial training is that they were generally told that “you will find you’re able to do things you never would have thought possible,” and that’s generally true. People have survived far worse than being impaled by a hiking staff, and some of them have walked for miles and miles afterward. For most of human history, if you were somehow messed up in a remote place, that was the only chance you had; cowboy up and walk on out. The annals of the American West, in particular, are laden with such stories.
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That doesn’t make David Cifaldi’s feat any less impressive, though. His Man Card is secure, now, for life.
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