6 days with no food or oxygen, missing Nepali Sherpa found alive on Everest

Dawa Sherpa was returning with a Polish climber after failing to reach the 29,032-ft summit, when he went missing between Camp III and Camp IV.

He was last seen on May 29. While the climber returned to base camp, Dawa never arrived. It remains unclear how the two got separated

With the seasonal route already being dismantled and most climbers having left the mountain, people were starting to lose hope of finding him alive.

Search efforts initially yielded no trace of the guide, and his family eventually began performing traditional funeral rituals, convinced they had lost him.

The astonishing breakthrough came when members of a clean-up team working on Everest’s lower slopes spotted a lone figure struggling through the snow above the treacherous Khumbu Icefall.

The team, tasked with removing ropes and ladders and clearing debris left behind after the climbing season, quickly realised the man was Dawa, still in a climbing jacket.

The distance between the spot where he was last seen and where he was eventually found suggests he had traversed a significant stretch of the mountain.

Exhausted, frostbitten and barely able to move, the guide was carried down from the mountain and flown by helicopter to Kathmandu for urgent medical treatment.

Doctors are treating him for frostbite and complications linked to prolonged exposure to extreme high-altitude conditions.

His daughter, Mendo Lhamu Sherpa, said the family was overwhelmed after learning he had survived.

“He recognised me is good and speaks. We are happy,” Reuters news agency quoted Mendo as saying.

The family had already started mourning him when news emerged that he had been found alive.

Initially unable to believe the reports, relatives sought photographs to confirm the rescued man was indeed Dawa before celebrating the unexpected reunion.

Mountaineering officials said Dawa appears to have survived several days in one of the world’s harshest environments, enduring freezing temperatures and oxygen-starved conditions while navigating dangerous terrain largely on his own.

“Dawa survived alone for nearly a week without food, water, or supplemental oxygen navigating the treacherous Khumbu Icefall (even after the fixed ladders were removed for the season),” the Nepal Mount Everest hiking company said in a social media post. “This is nothing short of a miracle.”

The rescue comes at the end of one of Everest’s busiest climbing seasons on record.

More than 1,000 climbers and guides successfully reached the summit this year after Nepal issued a record 494 climbing permits.

The season, however, was not without challenges. Five climbers and guides lost their lives on the mountain, according to officials.

Earlier in the season, hundreds of climbers were forced to wait at base camp after a massive block of glacial ice delayed the opening of the route to the world’s highest peak by nearly two weeks.

– Ends

(With Reuters inputs)