As Lawrence Bishop lay battered, bruised and weakened from two days without food or water, clinging to a narrow ledge of slick granite high in the Sierra Nevada, Deputy David Rippe made a split-second decision that likely saved him.

Without ropes, Rippe scrambled 300 feet up a 70-degree slope of granite polished smooth by eons of snow and ice to secure Bishop with nylon webbing he happened to have in his pocket.

"I knew I had to get there quickly and safely," Rippe, a member of the Fresno County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue Team, said Wednesday. "He looked like he was going to fall at any moment, and I was just hoping I could get there before he did."

Saturday's dramatic rescue was completed when a high-altitude Highway Patrol helicopter hoisted Bishop off the 10,295-foot peak, capping a 24-hour search for the 64-year-old man who had become separated from his group nearly two days earlier.