Sherpa guide Hillary Dawa, 52, has been found alive after surviving six days alone high on Mount Everest after being reported missing and feared dead, in what climbers have hailed as a “Himalayan miracle”
A man has survived six days high on Mount Everest after going missing and being thought dead in what climbers have described as a “Himalayan miracle”. Hillary Dawa Sherpa, also referred to as Hillart or Hillary Darwa, a 52-year-old guide, was found alive on Thursday morning (June 4).
Dawa, an experienced Sherpa from Okhaldhunga, Nepal, had been working for a budget outfitter called Himalayan Traverse Adventure. He was guiding a Polish client and a British climber on a last-minute summit attempt at the end of May.
The group reportedly got into trouble during a punishing, late-day push towards the summit and began descending on May 29 in extreme conditions.
During the descent, the Polish climber suffered severe frostbite and ran out of oxygen. Dawa was consequently last seen at the Yellow Band, around 7,600 metres, just above Camp 3, where he sat down on a rock, exhausted and depleted of oxygen.
He told fellow climber Chris Thrall that he was fine and urged him to push on with the frostbitten client. Dawa was left behind as the rest of the team struggled down to Camp 2, Explorersweb reported.
Controversy quickly followed, with no immediate rescue launched. May 29 marked the official closure of the Everest spring season and the ladder-and-rope route through the Khumbu Icefall was dismantled almost straight away, hampering any rapid attempt to go back up.
Dawa’s agency reportedly faced intense public scrutiny for failing to mount an urgent rescue operation, reigniting debate over whether the lives of local Sherpas are valued less than those of Western climbers. Many experts publicly said his chances of survival at that altitude for so long were effectively zero.
However, on Thursday, a seasonal cleaning crew from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) spotted Dawa. He was seen crawling down snowy slopes near “crampon point” at the base of the Khumbu Icefall, having survived alone for six days in freezing conditions and extreme altitude.
The SPCC team secured him, gave him food and water, and carried him down to Base Camp. A rescue helicopter later managed to reach the mountain and airlifted him to hospital in Kathmandu for urgent medical treatment, Midland Daily News reported.
The human rights controversy surrounding Sherpas on Mount Everest is increasingly being framed as a story of deadly labour exploitation, unequal protections, and the way local lives are treated as an expendable part of a lucrative Western tourism industry. Critics argue that while Everest is marketed as a personal challenge for wealthy climbers, much of the risk is borne by Nepali workers who make summits possible, often with far fewer safeguards and far less reward.
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