Guide Assumed Dead Found Crawling Down Everest

A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen around Friday descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his Polish client did, per the AP. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above base camp, said Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, which coordinated the search.

He was quickly carried down to safety and given food and water. A rescue helicopter flew him to HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu, where his wife and daughter, who had already begun funeral rituals for him, were waiting. Though Dawa had been missing since last week, there was a delay in organizing a search team. No reasons were given for the delay, but when helicopters were finally sent to look for him, they could not find him. He was last known to be at a spot called Yellow Band above Camp 3, which is some 6,000 feet above base camp. His family had given up hope and were on the second day of a funeral ritual, which lasts for several days, when they learned the good news.

Nepal's mountaineering community has hailed Dawa's survival as miraculous. "This is nothing short of a miracle surviving so many days on the mountains facing such harsh condition," said Ang Tshering Sherpa, a leading figure in the community, suggesting someone not so well trained "might not have survived." The team that spotted him was part of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, which lays the ladders and ropes on the route at the start of each climbing season and then removes the equipment and cleans up the site after climbers have left. More than 1,000 climbers and their guides scaled Everest this May, making it the busiest climbing season ever on the world's highest mountain. (An American claimed a new speed record.)