Nepali Mount Everest guide found alive after being missing for six days

A Nepali Sherpa guide who went missing on Mount Everest six days ago has been found crawling alone to base camp after fears that he had died.

According to Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, which was coordinating the search for the missing guide, Dawa Sherpa was found by a clearing crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall.

Dawa, 52, was carried down to safety and given food and water. A rescue helicopter flew him to HAMS Hospital in the capital, Kathmandu, where his wife and daughter, who had already begun funeral rituals, were waiting.

“We first heard that he was still alive on the local news and from a person we know who called with the news that … he is being brought down,” his wife, Damu Sherpa, said.

Dawa was last seen around May 29 descending the mountain. He did not reach base camp, although his client, a Polish climber, did.

There was a delay in organising a search team, and when rescue helicopters were finally sent to find him, they could not.

For Dawa’s family, hope of seeing him again was all but gone.

His teenage daughter, Mendo Lhamu Sherpa, said they were already on the second day of a funeral ritual, which lasts for several days.