A tricky all-night rescue ended with a stranded hiker sliding down a San Francisco cliff face and being scooped up by the fire department’s swimmers.
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The fire department spearheaded the seven-hour effort that began with a 911 call after 9 p.m. Friday from an injured person who was clinging to a cliff off the Lands End Trail near Dead Man’s Point.
The first challenge was finding the person in the dark. Crews used cell phone triangulation as well as information relayed by the emergency dispatchers who stayed on the phone with the caller, the fire department’s report said.
Once they located the person, rescuers contended with dense fog and steep brushy terrain as they set up a rope system. Around 2 a.m., a social media update posted by the agency said: “The rock face is becoming unstable and the perch where the victim is located is deteriorating. There is increased risk of the victim falling if the perch gives way.”
A Coast Guard rescue helicopter was called, but by the time it arrived, the fog had closed in again and the air operation was scrapped.
The fire department’s rescuers came up with a third strategy: They had the victim slide down the cliff “in a controlled descent” to the shoreline. “Rescue swimmers were staged in the water and immediately assisted the adult victim through heavy surf to a waiting SFFD rescue boat,” the agency reported around 5 a.m.
The victim was taken to a hospital with injuries said to be non-life-threatening. One rescue swimmer sustained minor injuries and was taken to the emergency room.
Besides the fire department and the Coast Guard, agencies involved included the U.S. Park Police and the San Francisco police’s drone unit.
The Lands End cliffs, west of the Presidio, were also the site of a rescue on Memorial Day. A person described as a young adult fell 100 feet off a cliff near Sutro Baths and was brought to safety by rescuers aboard a California Highway Patrol helicopter.
Deaths near the site include those of Jeffrey Rash, 42, in 2019 and Victoria La Rocca, 17, in 2017. La Rocca, a student at San Francisco’s St. Ignatius College Preparatory high school, had been on an outing with two friends when she climbed a fence near a sign warning of dangerous terrain. She fell from a cliff above Mile Rock Beach and died of her injuries as she was being taken to a hospital.
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