A missing Sherpa guide who disappeared on Mount Everest while working with a Polish climber has been found alive after nearly a week.
The last time anyone saw 52-year-old Dawa Sherpa was Friday as he descended the mountain alongside his client, ABC News reported Thursday.
The client made it to base camp but Dawa went missing, prompting an aerial search. However, he was eventually spotted by a cleaning crew early Thursday as he crawled down the slopes just above the base camp.
“Dawa survived alone for nearly a week without food, water, or supplemental oxygen navigating the treacherous Khumbu Icefall (even after the fixed ladders were removed for the season). This is nothing short of a miracle,” the Nepal Mount Everest hiking company said, according to Deutsche Welle (DW).
A rescue helicopter transported Dawa to a hospital on Thursday, and video footage showed the moment he was loaded into the aircraft. The Telegraph reported that before he was found alive, his family was told to begin funeral preparations because he was presumed dead:
“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 the climbers have left,” the ABC article read.
Rescue crews were reportedly delayed due to complications because Dawa had a permit through one company but was climbing with another, the DW report noted.
His daughter said when relatives learned he had been found they were unsure if it was him and asked for a picture to confirm his identity.
“Then only we were sure and were very happy,” she stated. More video footage showed Dawa not long after he was found and he appeared to be quite alert:
“Since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first summited Everest in 1953, more than 7,000 people have reached the peak. But over 300 climbers have died on the mountain — and 132 were working Sherpas. To this day, around 200 bodies remain on the mountain, frozen in ice and snow,” CBC reported in May.
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