A Mount Everest Sherpa guide was found crawling back to base camp per week after he went missing and was safely reunited along with his family, who were uncertain if he would return.
Dawa Sherpa, 52, was last seen May 29 at a spot called Yellow Band above Camp 3 at 7,200 metres (23,622 feet). Base camp is at 5,300 metres (17,388 feet), but he failed to succeed in it although his client did, The Associated Press reported.
The pair were among the many last on the mountain because the climbing season drew to a detailed and their route down was dismantled.
Dawa was spotted by a cleansing crew on Thursday morning, crawling down the snow-capped slopes near the Khumbu Icefall, just above base camp, Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, which co-ordinated the search, told the AP.
The crew transported him to safety and provided food and water. Dawa was flown by rescue helicopter to HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, where his wife and daughter, who had already begun funeral rituals, were waiting for him.
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“We first heard that he was still alive on the local news and from an individual we all know who called with the news that … he’s being brought down,” his wife, Damu Sherpa, said.
Medics treat Dawa Sherpa, a mountain guide who had been missing for several days within the Everest region, after he arrived at HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, on June 4, 2026.
Despite Dawa having been missing since last week, a search-and-rescue team was delayed in deploying. When helicopters were finally sent to search out him, Dawa was nowhere to be seen. His family had given up hope and were on the second day of a days-long funeral ritual when news of his rescue reached them.
“Once we first heard about it (the rescue), we couldn’t make certain if that person was indeed our father,” his daughter Mendo Lhamu said. “So, to make sure, we asked for photos to be sent after which only we were sure and really pleased.”
The team that spotted Dawa was a part of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, which is chargeable for placing the ladders and ropes at the beginning of every climbing season after which removing the equipment and cleansing up after its closure.
Dawa comes from the town of Okhaldhunga, south of Everest, and is employed by a small Kathmandu-based company called Himalayan Traverse. He was guiding a Polish climber when he went missing.
His survival has been widely hailed by the Sherpa community as extraordinary.
“That is nothing in need of a miracle surviving so many days on the mountains facing such harsh condition,” Ang Tshering Sherpa, a number one figure locally, told the AP.
“Sherpas are built tough growing up within the mountains,” Ang Tshering added. “If there was another person in his place, they may not have survived.”
Members of the Sherpa community were mostly yak herders and traders living deep inside the Himalayas until Nepal opened its borders within the Nineteen Fifties; their stamina and familiarity with the mountains quickly made them sought-after guides and porters.
The storied history of Sherpas within the region, which dates back tens of 1000’s of years, has also made them renowned mountaineers with exceptional resilience to hypoxia, in keeping with a study published within the National Library of Medicine, eventually allowing them to dominate the Himalayan climbing business.
Greater than 1,000 climbers and their guides scaled Everest this May, which was the busiest climbing season ever on the world’s highest mountain. It began late due to a large ice block on the route just above the bottom camp that took about two weeks to clear.
In October, greater than 300 climbers became stranded on the world’s highest peak amid freak blizzards that trapped them at elevations above 4,900 metres (16,000 feet).
In April, some Everest guides were accused of collaborating in an alleged USD$20 million insurance scam involving fake rescues and fraudulent hospital admissions to assert insurance money.
— with files from The Associated Press
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.