Sherpa found alive after six-day ordeal on Mount Everest

A cleaning crew on Everest found Dawa Sherpa crawling and sliding near Base Camp after six days without food, water or supplemental oxygen, ending a search that had already reached the point where his family began funeral rituals.

Sherpa, also known as Hillary Dawa Sherpa, was last seen on May 29 above Camp 3 at about 7,500 meters, or 24,600 feet, while descending Mount Everest after turning back short of the summit with a Polish client. Chris Thrall later described that last sighting, helping piece together the guide’s path from the upper mountain into one of the most dangerous stretches on earth. By June 4, he had reappeared alive near Everest Base Camp, discovered by a Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee cleaning crew near the Khumbu Icefall and Crampon Point.

Rescuers called the outcome astonishing and miraculous. The 52-year-old guide was reportedly moving on his own through the icefall when found, after having to descend roughly from 25,000 feet to 17,500 feet by himself. He was carried down from the icefall, flown by helicopter to HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu and treated for exhaustion, severe frostbite on his hands and other complications.

At the hospital, his daughter, Mhendo Lhamo Sherpa, said he recognized her and was able to speak. The family had already begun funeral rituals before word came that he was alive. In a landscape where death can come quickly and quietly, that detail underscored how thin the line is between rescue and recovery on Everest.

The episode has also reopened a harder question in Nepal’s climbing economy: who bears the greatest risk when international clients pay for summit ambitions. Dawa Sherpa was working with Himalayan Traverse Adventures, and the case has sharpened scrutiny of expedition management, client decisions and guide oversight in the death zone. The Kathmandu Post reported that Polish climber Mariusz Chmielewski accused Himalayan Traverse Pvt Ltd of negligence and demanded an investigation.

That allegation lands in a business model built on high fees, tight margins and intense dependence on Sherpa labor. Foreign climbers dominate the headlines when Everest succeeds, but local guides and porters are the ones most exposed when plans unravel, weather changes or a client turns back late. Dawa Sherpa’s survival is extraordinary even by Himalayan standards, but it also exposes the limits of rescue above Base Camp, where self-rescue is often the only rescue that exists.