Sherpa presumed dead and 'miraculously' found 6 days after disappearing on Everest

First responders and rescue teams carry climber Dawa Sherpa upon his arrival at HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu on June 4, 2026.
AFP
A Nepali mountaineering guide who had been presumed dead on Mount Everest has been found crawling towards Base Camp, six days after he was last seen alive.
Dawa Sherpa was last seen above Camp 3, which is at an altitude of around 7,500 meters, while descending the mountain after reaching the summit.
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Hopes of finding him alive were slim, as the air at this altitude is rarefied - but, on Thursday (04), a cleaning team spotted the experienced climber, who had frostbite on his hands, but seemed to be in good health, slowly sliding towards low.
"Dawa managed to survive for days against all odds. It's nothing short of a miracle," said Pemba Sherpa, executive director of 8K Expeditions, which was coordinating the search. "This is a true self-rescue."
Five people have died so far in this year's climbs - three of them Nepalis who were involved in preparation work to begin a climb, according to the AFP news agency.
More than a thousand people have reached Everest's summit this season, which has been the busiest on record.
How frozen bodies of climbers were recovered from Everest's 'death zone'
Dawa Sherpa - aka Hillary Dawa Sherpa, in reference to famous mountaineer Edmund Hillary - was "slowly gliding" down the so-called Khumbu Icefall toward Base Camp when he was found, Pemba Sherpa said.
"As far as I know, no one has survived alone at that altitude on Everest so far. It's a miracle that he survived for six days alone and came down safely. I think he must have stayed inside the tents to stay safe," said Pemba Sherpa.
Dawa Sherpa is "awake and receiving treatment", according to Nishant Dhakal, a doctor in the intensive care unit at HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu.
"He recognized me... he is fine and can speak", his daughter Mhendo Lhamo Sherpa told Reuters news agency after visiting him. "We are happy."
Before he was found, the wife of the 52-year-old climber told AFP that she had prayed for his soul.
Damu Sherpa (left), wife of climber Dawa Sherpa, is comforted by a relative at HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu on June 4, 2026.
AFP
On Wednesday, Chris Thrall, a climber and former Royal Navy marine, published a tribute to Dawa Sherpa on Instagram, believing he had died on the mountain. In the video, Thrall recalled that Dawa Sherpa had "sat down to rest with his backpack" as they descended from Camp 4, the highest camp before the summit.
"And I turned around and said, 'Hillary, are you okay, brother?' He said, 'Yes, yes, I'm fine, Chris, please go, go!'" Thrall said. "That's nothing new, you know, I was ahead, or he was ahead."
As he descended, Thrall met a struggling Polish climber who was part of the group, and they continued the descent together. But Dawa Sherpa never reached them.
"It was a long attempt to reach the summit. What should have taken five days to climb to the summit and back took us 11 days, so challenging were the conditions," Thrall said.
"So should I go back for Sherpa, who will probably turn up and be fine, as has happened hundreds of times before?" he added.
A relative of Dawa, Kung Sherpa, had expressed dissatisfaction with the progress of the summit. searches in an interview with Outside, an adventure sports website.
The searches, when they began, were conducted by a company called 8K Expeditions, which ended up being able to rescue him by air to a safe location.
We used artificial intelligence to translate this report, originally written in English.

The text was reviewed by a BBC journalist before publication. Find out more here about how the BBC is using artificial intelligence (link to text in English).
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