A Nepali climbing guide who went missing on Mount Everest for six days and was believed dead has been found alive after crawling alone almost to Base Camp, officials told AFP on Thursday.
His wife had even begun to offer last rite prayers for his soul, she told AFP at the hospital in the capital Kathmandu, where he is recovering from “some frostbite” but is conscious.
Mountaineer Dawa Sherpa — who is in his 50s, and is better known as “Hillary”, like famed climber Edmund Hillary — vanished on the upper reaches of the world’s highest mountain in bitter conditions, early on May 30.
He was found on Thursday morning close to Base Camp by the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC), a Nepali team that helps set routes on Everest and clean up waste left behind.
“He was found by a team of SPCC this morning close to the base camp — he was crawling down,” Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, which was overseeing search and rescue efforts, told AFP.
A helicopter flew him to Kathmandu, where an AFP team saw him carried out on a stretcher.
“He is awake and undergoing treatment,” Nishant Dhakal, a doctor in the intensive care unit of Kathmandu’s HAMS Hospital, said.
“We are managing his frostbites, cold injuries, hydration and trauma. He is being further evaluated and will be in our ICU.”
Dawa Sherpa’s wife, Damu Sherpa, said her family was overjoyed.
“We were very happy to hear the news, we had given up hope,” she said. “We also began puja (last rite prayers) yesterday.”
His daughter Mendo Lhamu Sherpa said they almost did not believe it when they received a telephone call to say that he was found.
“At first we were not sure if it was him — but they sent us photos to confirm, and then I was happy,” she said.
– ‘Tiger of the mountains’ –
Climber Chris Thrall, a former British Royal Marine, said he successfully summited the 8,849-metre (29,032-foot) peak with Dawa Sherpa around 5:00 pm on May 29.
He posted a video message on Instagram on Wednesday mourning what he thought was the death of Dawa Sherpa.
He called him an “absolute gentle giant of a man and a true ‘tiger of the mountains'”, in a post that assumed the worst.
Thrall described how on May 30 he had begun to descend from Camp Four — at around 7,950m, just below the low-oxygen “death zone”.
He said that as he descended, Dawa Sherpa stopped.
“He sat down for a rest with his backpack, these guys carry huge loads,” he said.
“And I turned and I said, ‘Hillary, are you okay, brother?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes, fine Chris, please go, go!’ This is nothing new, you know, I’d go ahead, he’d go ahead.”
As Thrall went down, he found a Polish climber who was struggling after running out of supplementary oxygen and had suffered frostbite.
“It had been a long summit push. What should have been five days to the summit and back took us 11 days, that’s how challenging the conditions were,” said Thrall.
“So, do I go back for Sherpa, who’s probably going to rock up and be fine, as he has done hundreds of times before?” he added.
“Or do I help my fellow climber, who’s got no oxygen, frostbite in his fingers, and obviously you’re never far off hypothermia up there?”
Thrall described tough conditions, sharing his oxygen cylinder with the Pole as they descended, taking 11 hours to get to Camp Three. It would usually take two hours.
“I realised we had a really serious situation,” he said.
Search teams set out to find Dawa Sherpa but he was not seen again until Thursday morning, having made his way down on his own.
The climb was one of the last of the season, meaning that there were few other mountaineers on the peak.
At least five people have died this season — two Indians and three Nepali climbers involved in Everest preparations.
More than 1,000 climbers reached the summit of Everest this season, according to initial tallies by Nepali officials, making it the busiest season on record.
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