News24 | Nepali guide feared dead emerges alive, crawling down Mount Everest after six days

A Nepali climbing guide who went missing on Mount Everest for six days and was feared dead has been found alive after crawling back to Base Camp, officials told AFP on Thursday.

The experienced Hillary Dawa Sherpa vanished on the upper reaches of the world’s highest mountain early on 30 May.

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 crawling down,” Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, which was overseeing search and rescue efforts, told AFP.

“A helicopter has been sent to bring him to a hospital in Kathmandu.”

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Climber Chris Thrall, a former British Royal Marine, said he successfully summited the 8 849m peak with Sherpa around 17:00 on 29 May.

He posted a video message on Instagram on Wednesday morning about what he thought was the death of Sherpa.

He called Sherpa 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 30 May, he had begun to descend from Camp Four - at around 7 950m - and just below the low-oxygen “death zone”.

“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.

“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.

Search teams set out to find 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 one thousand climbers reached the summit of Everest this season, according to initial tallies by Nepali officials, making it the busiest season on record.