(NewsNation) — Ten days after a hike gone wrong, 34-year-old Lukas McClish was found safe in California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park and reunited with his family. One photographer captured it all.

Emergency rescue photographer Steve Kuehl was on the scene when responding agencies located McClish after more than a week of searching.

“It was obviously a very emotional and raw moment for everybody. Because at that moment, all the responders that were there got to see a mother seeing her son alive for the first time in almost weeks, not knowing what happened to them,” Kuehl said. “So, it was a powerful moment.”

Kuehl has known McClish’s family for years and witnessed how his disappearance impacted his loved ones.

“His father’s a retired fire chief from the local districts, and he pretty much never stopped hiking from what I heard,” he said. “He had been up for days, hiking for days, looking in all parts of that area and around our district.”

While fire damage changed the landscape of the park and wiped away markers McClish had grown familiar with, leading to his disappearance, fires are also what helped save him.

The man who called and reported McClish’s yelling — the “unsung hero” of the incident, according to Kuehl — was a retired firefighter with a good ear.

“(His) house burned down in the CZU fire that came through here about four years ago,” Kuehl said. “And with all the foliage removed in the canyon below his house, he was able to hear Lucas calling for help.”

Rescuing agencies said McClish had no major injuries when he was found.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect the correct number of days that the hiker spent lost in the forest.