A couple who climbed a cliff at Battery Cranston in San Francisco’s Presidio on Wednesday (Sep 9) evening to watch the sunset were stranded after darkness fell. With their mobile phone dying, the couple called 911, and firefighters arrived promptly, pulling both of them to safety, the San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD) said.
When a cosy sunset view turned into a rescue operation
The couple’s Wednesday evening began like many romantic San Francisco moments: a hike to a scenic cliff, the promise of golden light over water, the kind of memory people plan for. But timing and tide operate by their own logic, indifferent to human plans. They climbed partway up the cliff to get an unobstructed view as the sun dipped towards the horizon. The climb wasn’t as adventurous in daylight. But then darkness fell.What made the location beautiful during golden hour became disorienting in the dark. The rising tide altered their whole plan. Soon, the couple realised their route back down to the beach, the same way they had arrived, was now underwater. High tide almost erased their way out. They were on a cliff face in the black of night, unable to navigate safely downwards, unable to move forwards. Soon enough, they realised they were stranded.“It got dark, the tide came in, so they were not able to exit through the beach how they came in. So they were basically trapped,” SFFD Capt. Mariano Elias told SFGATE.The stranded couple reached for their phones at 9:21 p.m. and dialled 911.One of them knew about an app called What3words, a location service that assigns three-word codes to every spot on Earth. The app is designed for scenarios exactly like this. This gave the rescuers precise coordinates when verbal descriptions failed. The couple transmitted their three-word location, and firefighters began moving towards Battery Cranston.But when San Francisco Fire Department crews arrived in the area, the rescue looked more complicated than they had assumed. It was dark, and the couple was somewhere on the cliff. What3words had narrowed the search area, but it couldn’t pinpoint two people on a rock face.
The rescue team arrives
Captain Mariano Elias of the SFFD recounted what happened next. The couple’s phone was dying, with only a 4% battery indicator. Their power was nearly gone. If it died, the connection would be severed. Communication would end. The firefighters arrived with lights. The couple saw the beams sweeping across the cliff face. They knew help was there, and so they yelled.“They saw our lights when they were on the phone. Interestingly enough, their cellphone only had 4% power. That kind of worried me when I heard that,” Elias told the outlet.A specialised SFFD rescue team descended the cliff face, moving carefully down the stone with cables and harnesses. The climb took time. The couple had been sitting with rising dread and a phone on life support. The rescue team pulled the couple back to safety.“A cliff rescue response was dispatched, and after using a location app and verbal calls, both were found and hauled up to safety using a rope system. Great work by all SFFD members resulted in the 2 people being back to safety in 1 hour, and nobody was injured,” the San Francisco Fire Department said in a social media post afterwards. “This is what we train for, even into the late night.” They also shared images and videos of the operation afterwards. In one photo, the couple is visible on the cliff’s side, with the Golden Gate Bridge framed in the background.Elias added that the cliff wasn’t ‘straight down’ and instead had a gradual decline, but its angle was still too steep for two people to descend safely in darkness.He also advised San Francisco residents and visitors to be aware of their surroundings, especially near the beach or cliffs.Stay on designated trails. The city is beautiful for a reason, but beauty doesn’t negotiate with tides. “We want people to go out and visit our city, but we want people to be careful and stay on trails,” he told the outlet.