Miracle on Everest: Sherpa believed dead crawls back to base camp

Mumbai: The family of Dawa Sherpa were told that he had died while descending Everest, and that they should start preparing his funeral.

Last seen about 7500 metres above sea level, he had little food and no oxygen, and a helicopter rescue team could not see him. Ladders had been removed from the most treacherous routes down. The deadly climbing season appeared to have claimed its latest victim.

But then, nearly a week after he went missing, the Everest base camp clean-up team saw something remarkable.

The 52-year-old veteran guide was spotted crawling slowly towards them.

The drama had begun six days earlier when the guide, known to Nepal’s climbing community as Hillary Dawa Sherpa – after the mountaineer Edmund Hillary – had been climbing Everest with a Polish client in the final days of Nepal’s spring season.

On May 29, the client abandoned his attempt to reach the summit after suffering from frostbite and they hurried back to camp.

Somewhere between the death zone and Camp 3, the Polish client pushed ahead and joined another group of climbers on their way down to Camp 2.

Chris Thrall, a former British Royal Marine who was in the same group as Dawa, saw him sitting down for a rest. “I turned and I said, ‘Hillary, are you OK, brother?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes, fine Chris, please go, go!’” Thrall said in an Instagram video.

It was the last time he saw him. Dawa found himself alone near the Yellow Band, a steep rock section above Camp 3, at about 7500 metres.

The other climbers, including the frostbitten Pole, made it down to Camp 2.

“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,” Thrall said.

“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?”

A spokesman for Himalayan Traverse, Dawa’s employer, said: “They waited for Dawa until the next day, but he didn’t come.”

By May 31, other climbers had left the mountain. The spring season had ended and teams had removed the ladders that spanned the crevasses of the treacherous Khumbu Icefall.

Dawa’s 18-year-old daughter, Mendo Lhamu, said the family had begun preparing funeral rites. An emotional Thrall visited them and offered to launch a GoFundMe page to pay for her education.

He had posted a tribute to Dawa on Instagram, thinking he had become the sixth climber to die this year. More than 1000 reached the Everest summit this season, making it the busiest on record.

“The Himalayan Traverse company told us to do the funeral and that he h