iStockphoto
Most people who attempt to climb Mount Everest rely on sherpas who’ve been offering support since the world’s tallest peak was scaled for the first time close to 75 years ago. It is not a job for the faint of heart based on how many have perished in the line of duty, and a guide who was presumed dead was recently rescued after going missing for close to a week.
Edmund Hillary is widely credited with being the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest when he conquered the world’s tallest peak in 1953. However, he was accompanied by Tenzing Norgay, the sherpa who joined him at the top and played an instrumental role in that feat by deploying his knowledge of the treacherous terrain while climbing 29,028 feet above sea level.
The word “sherpa” technically refers to an ethnic group that resides in Nepal, India, and Tibet, but it’s become synonymous with the guides who accompany the thousands of people who attempt to climb Mount Everest and other peaks in the Himalayas each year while hauling gear and doling out vital advice.
They account for approximately one-third of the nearly 350 people who have lost their lives attempting to scale Everest, and the family of one man who recently went missing while returning from a climb assumed he had become the latest one to fall victim to that fate before things took a borderline miraculous turn.
A sherpa was airlifted to safety after being spotted crawling back to camp six days after disappearing on Mount Everest
The primary climbing season at Mount Everest traditionally starts near the end of April and wraps up at the end of May. Frigid winter conditions make an ascent untenable prior to that point, and the monsoons that sweep through the region during the summer make it an equally treacherous venture (although some people do attempt to summit during a tiny window in the fall).
According to NBC News, a guide known as Hillary Dawa Sherpa and the climbers he was accompanying were one of the last groups to make it to the top of Everest this season. They embarked on a five-day journey to the summit midway through May and were in the midst of an 11-day descent when the former failed to make it to a base camp on May 29th.
The BBC reports Chris Thrall, a former member of the British Special Forces who was part of the group in question, says Dawa sat down to rest around 24,600 foot above sea level and urged him to continue to Camp 3 while pledging to catch up. However, he never appeared, and his family began to conduct funeral rites five days after he went missing.
They got some unexpected news on the sixth, as a cleaning crew that had been dispatched to the Khumbu Icefall (around 6,600 feet below where Dawa was last seen) spotted a man with frostbitten hands crawling on the ground. They realized it was the 52-year-old guide, who was given food and water before being airlifted via helicopter to a hospital in Kathmandu where his wife and daughter were waiting for him.
Pemba Sherpa, who oversees the company that had been searching for Dawa, says he survived “against all odds,” noting:
“As far as I know, no one has survived alone at that altitude on Everest so far. This is a miracle to have survived for six days alone and descended safe.”
Dawa is still being monitored in an intensive care unit, but it appears he’s on track to make a full recovery.