On May 29, Dawa Sherpa disappeared near the Yellow Band on Mount Everest, high above 7,200 meters. For six days, there was no sign of him. At that altitude, in the death zone, the air contains barely a third of the oxygen found at sea level, and people do not survive long. His family in Okhaldhunga began funeral rituals, believing he was gone. He was 52 years old.
Then, on June 4, something almost impossible happened. A cleaning crew from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, which removes waste from Everest, was working near the Khumbu Icefall when they saw movement on the ice. It was Dawa, alive and crawling. Somehow, after disappearing near the Yellow Band, he had made his way down alone and kept moving.
The Khumbu Icefall is one of the most dangerous sections of the mountain, where towers of ice can collapse without warning. Dawa was flown to a hospital in Kathmandu, where doctors treated him for frostbite and severe dehydration. Climbers who go missing in the death zone are almost never found alive. The cold, thin air and remoteness make rescue extremely difficult. That Dawa survived nearly a week at those heights and was discovered crawling toward safety makes his story one of the most remarkable from Everest. The Sherpa are an ethnic group from eastern Nepal who have worked on Everest as guides and porters for generations. For one family, the grief of late May was overturned by hope they had stopped believing in. The crew that found him had gone to clean the mountain. They came down carrying a man who had refused to stay lost.