A Sherpa climbing guide believed to have died atop Mount Everest has been found crawling back to Base Camp after spending nearly a week on the mountain without food or oxygen.
According to CNN, for six days there was no radio contact or sign of 52-year-old Hillary Dawa Sherpa, who was last seen on May 29 resting above Camp 3, located at an altitude of 7,060 meters.
He separated from his client and the climbing team, who had already descended and were part of the last group on Everest before the season ended. The stairs over the Khumbu Icefall, installed by Sherpas to help climbers traverse the most dangerous part of the climb, had already been dismantled, according to a mountaineering company.
With Hillary Dawa alone on the world’s highest mountain and in dangerous conditions for so long, his family had already begun funeral rites for him.
Tragedy gave way to joy last Thursday (4), when a team spotted him crawling through the icefall, exhausted and frostbitten, but alive.
“When we first heard about it (the rescue), we couldn’t be sure that that person was really our father,” Hillary Dawa’s daughter Mendo Lhamu told the Associated Press. “So, to confirm, we asked them to send photos and only then were we sure and we were very happy.”
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He was given food and water and taken by helicopter to a hospital in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, where he was treated for frostbite and other complications, according to Reuters news agency.
