Chris Thrall recalls last sighting of missing Everest guide Dawa Sherpa
A cleanup crew spotted Dawa Sherpa crawling down Everest’s Khumbu Icefall after six days missing, just after his family had begun funeral rituals.
Chris Thrall said his last sighting of Dawa Sherpa came high on Mount Everest, when the guide sat down with his backpack during the descent and waved him on. Thrall said he asked whether Dawa was okay, and Dawa answered, “Yes, yes, fine Chris, please go, go!” before Thrall kept moving downhill.
The two men had reached the summit at about 5:00 p.m. on Friday, May 29, 2026, but Dawa, also identified in several reports as 52-year-old Hillary Dawa Sherpa, vanished during the return route. He was last seen above Camp 3, around 24,600 feet, in or near the mountain’s death zone below Camp 4, where the thin air leaves even strong climbers vulnerable to collapse. Dawa was later separated while helping a Polish climber who also made it to base camp.
His disappearance turned into a rare survival story only because a cleaning and garbage-collection team spotted him sliding and crawling down the Khumbu Icefall near Everest Base Camp, around the route maintained by the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee. He had survived nearly a week without food, water or supplemental oxygen before the team found him and got him into a helicopter evacuation. He was flown to HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu, where reports said he was exhausted, suffered severe frostbite on his hands, and was awake enough to recognize family members.
By then, his wife, Damu Sherpa, and daughter, Mhendo Lhamo Sherpa, had already begun funeral rituals before learning he was alive. Expedition staff and Everest officials described the outcome as extraordinary, calling it a “true self-rescue” and “nothing short of a miracle.” In practice, the episode showed how survival on Everest often depends less on a single dramatic rescue than on whoever is still moving through the mountain’s most punishing terrain: guides, cleanup workers, and helicopter teams operating in a narrow weather window above base camp.
Dawa’s ordeal came during what has been described as Everest’s busiest season ever, with more than 1,000 climbers and guides on the mountain last month and at least five deaths reported so far in the 2026 spring season. The numbers underscore the mountain’s risk economy: Sherpa guides carry the burden of fixing routes, shepherding clients through the death zone, and, when things go wrong, trying to bring people back down through the icefall alive.
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