Nepali climber alive after six days missing on Everest

AFP | Kathmandu

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A Nepali climbing guide who went missing on Mount Everest for six days and was feared dead has been found alive after crawling back to Base Camp, officials said yesterday.

The experienced Hillary Dawa Sherpa vanished on the upper reaches of the world’s highest mountain early on May 30.

He was found yesterday morning close to Base Camp by the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC), a Nepali team that helps set routes on Everest and clean up waste left behind.

“He was crawling down,” Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, which was overseeing search and rescue efforts, said.

“A helicopter has been sent to bring him to a hospital in Kathmandu.”

Climber Chris Thrall, a former British Royal Marine, said he successfully summited the 8,849-metre (29,032-foot) peak with Sherpa around 5:00 pm on May 29.

He posted a video message on Instagram on Wednesday mourning what he thought was the death of Sherpa.

He called Sherpa an “absolute gentle giant of a man and a true ‘tiger of the mountains’”, in a post that assumed the worst.

Thrall described how on May 30 he had begun to descend from Camp Four -- at around 7,950m -- and just below the low-oxygen “death zone”.

He said that as he descended, Sherpa stopped.

“He sat down for a rest with his backpack, these guys carry huge loads,” he said.

“And I turned and I said, ‘Hillary, are you okay, brother?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes, fine Chris, please go, go!’ This is nothing new, you know, I’d go ahead, he’d go ahead.”