Miraculous story of survival high on Everest as Sherpa guide missing for a week found alive

By Helen Regan, CNN

(CNN) — A Sherpa climbing guide who was believed to have died high on Mount Everest was found crawling back to Base Camp after spending almost a week on the mountain with no food or bottled oxygen.

For six days, there had been no radio contact or sign of Hillary Dawa Sherpa, 52, who was last seen on May 29 resting above Camp 3, which sits at 7,060 meters (23,163 feet).

He became separated from his client and climbing team, who had already descended and were among the last group on Everest before it closed for the season. The ladders across the Khumbu Icefall, which are carefully fixed by Sherpas to help climbers navigate the most treacherous section of the climb, had already been dismantled, according to one mountaineering company.

With Hillary Dawa alone on the world’s tallest mountain in perilous conditions for so long, his family had already begun funeral rites for him.

But tragedy turned to joy on Thursday when a cleaning crew spotted him crawling through the icefall, exhausted and frostbitten, but alive.

“When we first heard about it (the rescue), we could not be sure if that person was indeed our father,” Hillary Dawa’s daughter, Mendo Lhamu, told the Associated Press. “So to be certain we asked for photos to be sent and then only we were sure and very happy.”

He was given food and water, and airlifted to hospital in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, where he was treated for frostbite and other complications, according to Reuters news agency.

Video posted on social media shows Hillary Dawa being carried on the back of another climber as they descended through the rocky terrain. Still in his yellow-and-blue climbing jacket, he can be seen in later video being wheeled on a trolley from the helipad at HAMS hospital in Kathmandu.

Many in the mountaineering community have hailed Hillary Dawa’s survival as miraculous.

“This is nothing short of a miracle surviving so many days on the mountains facing such harsh condition,” Ang Tshering Sherpa, a leading figure in the community, told AP.

The rescue caps off the busiest season ever on Everest with more than 1,000 climbers summiting the mountain’s south side, including a record 274 in a single day on May 20.

Videos of climbers waiting in long queues in an area known as the death zone – where the air is too thin to breathe unaided for long – on their way to the summit have once again made headlines, alongside record-breaking ascents from both Nepali and foreign climbers.

A miraculous story of survival

Hillary Dawa’s remarkable self-rescue has raised questions about why a search team had not been assembled when he was reported missing a week ago.

When search helicopters went looking for him this week, they found no sign of the climber, hiking company Nepal Mount Everest said in a social media post.

Those who found Hillary Dawa were members of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC), which sets the routes, ropes and ladders through the Khumbu Icefall at the start of the season, and is in charge of removing waste from the mountain once climbers have left.

Lama Kazi Sherpa, of the SPCC, told Reuters that his team located Hillary Dawa above Base Camp near the icefall and brought him down to safety.

In video posted after his rescue, Hillary Dawa said he had slipped and fallen into a crevasse near Camp 1 at around 6,000 meters (19,800 feet) and spent two days inside the icy fissure before managing to free himself, according to local media.

Hillary Dawa, a high-altitude guide for a small Kathmandu-based company called Himalayan Traverse, and his Polish client were descending Everest after failing to summit on May 29, AP reported.

British climber Chris Thrall, who was also a client with Himalayan Traverse and the last person to see Hillary Dawa before he went missing, said in an Instagram post that he was “elated and so happy for him and his wonderful family,” after believing him to have died on the mountain.

In video posted from Kathmandu on Wednesday, Thrall said that the Polish climber was battling frostbite and had descended with the Sherpa guide Thrall was climbing with, leaving Hillary Dawa and him to descend together.

Hillary Dawa had “sat down for a rest with his backpack” as they descended from Camp 4 at 7,900 meters (25,920 feet), he said.

“I turned and I said, ‘Hillary are you ok brother?’ And he said ‘yes, fine Chris, please go’,” Thrall said, adding that the guide had a radio and satellite phone with him.

According to Thrall, it wasn’t unusual for Hillary Dawa and other Sherpas to take a rest, and he expected him to catch up has he had done before.

On his way to Camp 3, Thrall said he came across the Polish climber, who had run out of bottled oxygen and was suffering with frostbite. Their climb had been challenging and had taken much longer than planned, he said.

“What should have been five days to the summit and back took us 11 days. That’s how challenging the conditions were,” he said.

With Hillary Dawa above him, Thrall, a former British Royal Marine, said he made the tough decision to help the struggling climber who was at risk of hypothermia, and they made their long descent to Camp 2, a journey that he said took about 19 hours in weather that changed from snowy to whiteout conditions.

“In none of that time at all when I looked back up the mountain did I see Hillary descend,” he said. “To say serious alarm bells were ringing, as in I think the worst has happened, would be an understatement.”

CNN cannot independently verify the account and has reached out to Himalayan Traverse for comment.

The incident has deepened concerns about the safety of Nepali workers on the mountain, which has seen an explosion of commercial guiding outfitters in recent years.

Experts recently told CNN that inexperienced operators and climbers posed serious safety risks on Everest, and some budget services were cutting corners on safety, equipment and monitoring by not using trained mountain guides, or adequately vetting clients’ experience levels.

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