This paper proposed a geolocation method for laser footprints based on the waveform matching. Specifically, for a single laser footprint, the simulated waveform based on airborne lidar point cloud data as prior measurements was matched with the captured waveform of the Gaofen-7 SLA. Within a laser track, the correlation coefficient of the matching results in successive footprints was calculated to further estimate the laser pointing and ranging information and re-geolocate the laser footprints in mountainous areas. A study area (the Utah State in USA) with local airborne lidar data was selected to verify the proposed method. With the mean surface slope of approximately 20°, the elevation accuracy of GaoFen-7’s laser footprints were improved from (2.45±2.93) m to (0.27±0.61) m, which proved the effectiveness of the proposed method.