Sherpa missing for six days on Everest crawls back from dead

Friday, 5 June 2026

Nepal

A Nepalese climbing guide lost on Mt Everest for six days managed to crawl alone to near base camp.

Dawa Sherpa had been left by his party on the upper reaches of the world's highest mountain in bitter conditions early on May 30. His wife had begun to offer prayers for the dead.

Aged 57 and better known as “Hillary”, after the climber Edmund Hillary, he was found on Thursday morning local time by a Nepalese team that helps set routes on Everest and cleans up waste.

“He was crawling down,” said Pemba Sherpa, of 8K Expeditions, which was overseeing search and rescue efforts. A base camp manager for another company said Sherpa had survived by eating a “small packet of biscuits” and ice after losing his bag and boots.

The guide's wife, Damu, said her family was overjoyed. “We had given up hope,” she said. “We also began puja [death prayers] yesterday.”

Dawa Sherpa was flown by helicopter to a hospital in the capital, Kathmandu. He was recovering from frostbite but was conscious, his wife said.

Chris Thrall, a climber and former Royal Marine, was with Dawa Sherpa on the descent after reaching the 8849m peak about 5pm on May 29. Dawa was “strong as an ox and clearly knew all the climbing techniques”, Thrall said but had struggled in the days nearing the summit. Thrall said he had to do portions of the climb alone, including the treacherous balcony, an exposed ridge 8400 metres above sea level. 'I came across a guy who was dead still clipped on. I literally had to manoeuvre around the body without trying to step on him. I said a little prayer to his family and then saw another body hanging from a rope,“ he said.

On May 30 he had begun to descend from Camp Four, at about 7950m, when Dawa stopped. “He sat down for a rest with his backpack - these guys carry huge loads,” said Thrall. “I turned and said, ‘Hillary, are you OK?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes, fine Chris, please go, go!’ This is nothing new, you know. I’d go ahead, he’d go ahead.” Just below the “death zone', where oxygen levels are perilously low, Thrall encountered a Polish climber who was struggling after running out of supplementary oxygen and suffering from frostbite. ”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?“ said Thrall. ”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 shared his oxygen with the Pole as they descended through tough conditions, taking 11 hours to reach Camp Three, which usually takes two hours. “This is a full-on emergency now, we're battling for our lives … my climbing buddy has got severe frostbite, fingertips going black, starting to go like a grape colour,” he said. “Most of the time I felt I was gonna die, especially coming down from Camp 4.”

Thrall had a cuddly toy wolf his son had given him as a lucky charm. “I was having to balance my support of the Polish guy with the promise I'd made to my 11-year-old boy that I would come back alive,” he said. “I can't go dying in the wilderness. We've got the rest of our lives together with me being his dad.”

They had only a half-cylinder of oxygen between them and minimal food. As night fell, they were unsure whether they would make it to Camp Three.

Search teams set out to find Dawa Sherpa, and in a social media post that assumed the worst, Thrall called him an “absolute gentle giant of a man and a true tiger of the mountains”. Thrall visited his wife and daughter, Mendo Lhamo, before he was found alive.

“I'm literally walking on to the plane at Kathmandu and I see someone say on social media: ‘Don't worry, he's alive’ … When then I'm seeing him crawl out of the wilderness like Crocodile Dundee it's obviously just unbelievable.”

More than 1000 climbers reached the summit this season, according to early Nepalese tallies, making it the busiest ever. At least five climbers have died, two Indians and three Nepalese.

Mingmar Tendi Sherpa, base camp manager of Elite Exped, said that Dawa Sherpa had fallen behind as his team hurried down before the end of the season. He had tried to come down alone but “slipped and fell into a crevasse at around 5,600m, just below Camp One. He spent around two and a half days in the crevasse. His bag and boots came off during the fall, and he survived on a small packet of biscuits, eating them along with ice to stay alive.”

Eventually, a small avalanche filled the crevasse and allowed him to drag himself out. “It is a miraculous survival,” Mingmar Tendi Sherpa said. “Survival in those conditions depends not only on physical strength but also on mental resilience.”