The Nepalese mountaineer who miraculously survived a week alone on the slopes of Everest, including three days at the bottom of a crevasse, told AFP how he managed to escape death. “I’m very happy to be back, I thought I was going to die there,” Dawa Sherpa told AFP, convalescing in an apartment in Kathmandu with his family.
Dawa Sherpa, 57, was found on June 4 not far from the base camp of the highest peak on the planet (8,849 m). Nicknamed Hillary after the legendary mountaineer Edmund Hillary, this Nepalese worked as a cook at Everest Camp 2 for a small company organizing Everest expeditions, Himalayan Traverse Adventure. But she had asked him to replace a guide, even though he had never reached the summit of Everest.
Dawa Sherpa climbed to Balcony, about 8,400 meters above sea level, on May 28, before descending to Camp 4 after dark with British climber Chris Thrall, Pole Mariusz Chmielewski and guide Pasang Kaji Sherpa. Chris Thrall was the last person to see Dawa Sherpa, when they were at around 7,900 meters above sea level.
Dawa Sherpa explains that he was behind schedule because he was low on oxygen and told Thrall to continue without him. “I told him to continue, that I was going to join him,” he said. “But when my oxygen ran out, I couldn’t move my hands or feet. So I hung on the rope for about half an hour.” Alone and exhausted, he slowly reached a tent and found noodles there.
Deafening bursts
“I ate some, and it helped me regain my senses (…) Then, I went down to Camp 3,” he continues, still at around 7,100 meters, where he spent a night in deafening gusts of wind. “I heated some water (…) prepared some porridge and ate it.” In the meantime, the rest of the team had reached camp 2 and alerted their employer. But search and rescue operations were delayed. Sherpa says he had a satellite phone, but couldn’t get it to work, and a walkie-talkie whose batteries died.
Dawa Sherpa continued his fight to advance the next day, and reached camp 2, but by that time all the other climbers had already left. Once again, he was alone. He thought he would continue his way to the base camp in one go, but at the formidable Khumbu icefall, one of the main difficulties of the Nepalese route, he fell into a crevasse.
“I slipped and fell off a ladder and was hanging there for a long time,” while holding a 60-pound bag containing eight empty oxygen tanks and customers’ sleeping bags, he said. He only dropped this weight into the icy depths once his hands were exhausted.
Finally, no longer having the strength to continue to hold on, he too fell. “I hit my head but fell on a flat surface,” injuring my leg, he continues. Digging through his jacket, he found frozen chocolate and freeze-dried coffee. “I had biscuits and chocolate in my pockets, and coffee… I had some. I didn’t have hot water, so I broke some ice to wet my mouth,” he said.
On June 3 – after six days of solitude – a helicopter roared into the sky. But he was still far away at the bottom of the crevasse. “I knew a helicopter had arrived, I heard its noise, but I didn’t see it,” he explains.
“No one came”
Dawa Sherpa says he spent two nights in the crevasse, unable to climb its smooth walls. “I was left there with nowhere to go. I wondered if I was going to live or die, just hoping that someone would come and rescue me,” he said, “But no one came. Instead, an avalanche arrived to save me. »
The avalanche filled the crevasse with snow, allowing it to crawl outward. “It was very difficult, it took me at least an hour, holding on to the ice and holding on with the crampons,” he says. “I put my foot on a piece of snow and went up slowly. When I got to the track, I felt like I was going to survive.”
Once out of the crevasse, he found a rope and followed it, eventually crawling to near base camp. There, on the morning of June 4, it was discovered by the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC), a Nepalese team that opens routes on Everest and cleans up waste left behind.
“I was very happy to see them, so I thought I was going to survive, for sure,” he said. Dawa Sherpa was evacuated by helicopter to Kathmandu, where doctors treated his frostbite, dehydration and broken femur. His unlikely survival sparked joy among fellow climbers, but also anger among his family and the Himalayan community over the failure of rescuers to locate him earlier. The government has launched an investigation.
Asked if he was ready to return to the mountains, Dawa Sherpa replied that he would no longer earn his living by climbing. “I won’t go back to the high mountains now, maybe just for a little trekking,” he says.
