A 7-year-old girl suffered a life-threatening medical emergency while hiking with her father on Mission Peak, setting off a coordinated, multi-agency scramble to get her off the mountain and into advanced care. The child survived, and the Fremont Fire Department is now crediting Engineer/Paramedic Ryan Eisfeld with building the plan that got her rapid access to advanced medical treatment and hospital transport.
According to the Fremont Fire Department, a 911 call set the response in motion, pulling together public safety professionals who worked together to save the young hiker's life. Eisfeld has since received a lifesaving award for his role in the incident, the department said. The department did not specify the exact date of the rescue in its announcement.
A Mountain That Regularly Tests Rescue Crews
Mission Peak's summit sits 2,517 feet above Fremont, and its main trails run more than six miles round-trip with over 2,000 feet of elevation gain, according to Wikipedia. The climb offers little shade, and the combination of heat exposure and steep, sustained grades frequently leads to dehydration and other medical emergencies among hikers making the popular trek. That terrain is a big part of why summit rescues on Mission Peak tend to require more than a single agency showing up with a stretcher.
Just last week, Fremont Firefighters Local 1689 reported that Fremont firefighters worked alongside the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department to transport a patient down from the Mission Peak summit, underscoring how routine this kind of joint response has become on the mountain. The Fremont Fire Department alone responds to more than 18,000 emergency calls a year across 11 stations covering roughly 90 square miles of the city, per the City of Fremont. Every front-line engine and aerial ladder truck the department runs carries at least one certified paramedic, allowing advanced life support to begin the moment crews reach a patient, city officials say.
Air Support Built for Exactly This Kind of Terrain
When ground access is difficult or too slow, rescues on Mission Peak often lean on aerial support. The East Bay Regional Park District Police Department Air Support Unit, which flies Airbus H125 helicopters such as Eagle 8 out of Hayward Executive Airport, is equipped for search and rescue, medical transport, and aerial firefighting across the district's sprawling holdings, according to the department. The park district is the largest local park agency in the country, managing 73 regional parks and more than 1,250 miles of trails across Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
That air unit trained specifically for scenarios like a stranded hiker on a steep slope. In June, the Air Support Unit conducted Human External Cargo training, a technique that lowers rescuers beneath a helicopter to reach patients in spots where ground crews simply cannot get a vehicle. Fremont Fire command has also deployed drones on past Mission Peak responses to pinpoint patients on steep, muddy sections of trail before directing helicopter crews toward hoist extractions, according to CHP Golden Gate Division Air Operations.
A Pattern of Multi-Agency Saves on the Same Peak
This is not the first time Mission Peak has demanded that level of coordination. In July 2024, California Highway Patrol Air Operations unit H-30 joined Fremont Fire, East Bay Parks and Falck Ambulance in airlifting a hiker suffering a summit medical emergency off the mountain, a rescue Hoodline covered in a prior air-rescue report. Falck Ambulance serves as the primary contracted ground EMS provider for Alameda County, typically receiving patients handed off from park trailheads once air units bring them down to lower staging areas.
An earlier joint rescue on the mountain, involving CHP Helicopter H-30 and Fremont Fire, made headlines in December 2023 as well. Together, these incidents point to a consistent operational reality on Mission Peak: its popularity and its punishing terrain mean that when a hiker goes down, saving them usually takes fire crews, park police, air units and ground ambulances all moving in concert. In this latest case, that coordinated system, credited by the Fremont Fire Department to the planning work of Eisfeld, is being held up as the reason a 7-year-old girl made it off the mountain alive.
