Rescued Sherpa Found Crawling to Everest Base Camp After Family Began Funeral Rites

A Sherpa guide presumed dead on Mount Everest has been found alive, crawling back to base camp a full week after he vanished—and just as his family had started funeral ceremonies. Hillary Dawa Sherpa, named after Sir Edmund Hillary, was last seen on May 29 in the mountain’s infamous “death zone,” where oxygen levels are too low for humans to survive for long. Search helicopters had turned up nothing. But on Thursday morning, a climbing support team spotted the 52-year-old making his way down the snowy slopes near the Khumbu icefall, just above base camp. He had frostbitten hands but was otherwise in decent shape. Rescuers quickly carried him to safety, gave him food and water, and a helicopter flew him to a hospital in Kathmandu. There, his wife and daughter—who had already begun the second day of a traditional multi-day funeral—were waiting. “We first heard he was still alive on the local news,” said his wife, Damu Sherpa. His teenage daughter, Mendo Lhamu, admitted they weren’t sure at first. “We asked for photos to be sent,” she said. “Then we were certain, and very happy.” Dawa had been guiding a Polish climber for a small Kathmandu firm called Himalayan Traverse. Fellow climber Chris Thrall, a former Royal Marine, had posted a video tribute thinking Dawa was dead. Thrall recalled seeing him sit down to rest on the descent. “I said, ‘Hillary, are you OK, brother?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes, fine Chris, please go, go!’” Thrall later found the Polish client with no oxygen and frostbite and helped him down, assuming the veteran Sherpa would follow. Nepal’s mountaineering community calls Dawa’s survival a miracle. “Sherpas are built tough,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa. “Anyone else might not have made it.” This May was the busiest climbing season ever on Everest, with more than 1,000 climbers and guides on the peak. Five people died. The mountain was first summited on May 29, 1953, by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary.