A Sherpa guide who spent nearly a week stranded on the slopes of Mount Everest is recovering in Kathmandu after being found alive in a dramatic rescue, even as his family demands accountability over what they describe as a delayed search effort.
57-year-old Dawa Sherpa was discovered on Thursday crawling through snow near the Khumbu Icefall, above Everest Base Camp, days after he disappeared while descending the mountain, AP reported.
He was airlifted to Nepal’s capital and reunited with relatives. According to HAMS Hospital, he is being treated for frostbite, dehydration and thigh-related complications but remains in stable condition.
Dawa Sherpa’s Family Files Complaint Against Employer
Meanwhile, his family has filed a police case against his employer,
the Kathmandu-based Himalayan Traverse company, and has lodged a complaint at Nepal’s Department of Tourism. They argue that rescue efforts began far too late.
“Action needs to be taken by the mountaineering department. It was negligence of the company that resulted in so much delay in starting rescue,” Dawa’s nephew, Karma Gelje Sherpa, told AP, adding, “If he had been a foreign climber, rescue would definitely have been organized much faster and prompt, but he happened to be an old Nepali.”
Dawa was last seen around May 29 near the Yellow Band section above Camp 3, at an altitude of about 7,200 metres. Two foreign climbers who had been with him reached Base Camp safely as the Everest climbing season came to a close and route infrastructure was being removed.
British climber Chris Thrall later said he was forced to assist a Polish climber suffering from frostbite during the descent. “He (Dawa) had been in death zone for 19 hours and at that point, a decision was made that we needed to descent through the Icefall,” Thrall had said earlier this week, explaining why he did not go up the mountain to look for Dawa.
Dawa was eventually located by a team from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, whose members were dismantling ladders and ropes and conducting seasonal cleanup work on the mountain.
