The final days of the record-breaking 2026 spring climbing season on Mount Everest were cloaked in a familiar, somber dread. On May 29, as the busiest season in history drew to a close, Hillary Dawa Sherpa—a seasoned 52-year-old high-altitude guide from Okhaldhunga—vanished into the notorious "Death Zone."
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| Hillary Dawa Sherpa |
For nearly a week, as the mountain emptied and vital infrastructure was dismantled, the mountaineering world prepared for the worst. Bureaucratic gridlock delayed initial rescue efforts, and by June 3, an extensive high-altitude helicopter search yielded absolutely nothing. No trace. No clues. No hope.
Then, the impossible happened.
On the morning of June 4, a garbage management crew from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) working near the base of the mountain spotted a figure. It was Hillary Dawa. Against all known laws of high-altitude survival, he was alive—sliding, stumbling, and crawling his way through the treacherous, shifting maze of the Khumbu Icefall under his own power.
Left Behind in the Death Zone.
The nightmare began on May 29 during a frantic, late-season race to descend the peak before the SPCC began dismantling the ladders and ropes through the Khumbu Icefall. Dawa was working for Himalayan Traverse Adventure, assisting a British climber and YouTuber, Chris Thrall, alongside a Polish mountaineer.
Exhausted and heavily laden with gear, Dawa paused to rest near the Yellow Band—a prominent rock feature at 24,600 feet.
"He sat down for a rest with his backpack," Thrall later recounted. "I turned to him and said, 'Hillary, are you OK brother?' He said, 'Yes, yes, I’m fine, Chris. Please go.'"
What followed was a series of agonizing, split-second decisions. Lower down the Lhotse Face, the Polish climber ran out of oxygen and began suffering from severe frostbite. Trapped between climbing back up to check on Dawa with a half-empty oxygen tank or guiding the freezing Polish climber to safety, Thrall chose to descend. They reached the safety of Camp II, exhausted and depleted. Dawa never arrived. From below, Thrall caught a final glimpse of a distant headlamp high on the slopes going dark.
Six Days of Silence and Finger-Pointing.
As the days ticked by, a grim reality set in. Dawa’s disappearance quickly ignited a storm of controversy, exposing the fractured, often negligent underbelly of commercial Everest expeditions.
Because Himalayan Traverse had processed its climbing permits through a larger agency, 8K Expeditions, a bureaucratic dispute arose over who was responsible for financing and initiating a rescue. Valuable days were lost. By the time 8K Expeditions deployed a search helicopter on June 3 at the desperate request of Dawa’s family, the mountain was silent. The aerial team flew as high as 7,300 meters (Camp III), scouring the routes twice. They returned with devastating news: there was no sign of life.
In Kathmandu and online, anger mounted. Dawa’s family openly blamed sheer negligence by the expedition agency. For six nights, a husband and father remained unaccounted for, entirely alone in sub-zero temperatures, without supplemental oxygen, shelter, or a known food source.
The Astonishing Escape.
How Hillary Dawa survived six days in the extreme elements remains an absolute mystery that doctors and mountaineers are calling miraculous.
Somehow, over the course of a week, Dawa managed to navigate his way down the Lhotse Face and across the Western Cwm entirely unassisted. When the SPCC workers miraculously spotted him on June 4, he was wearing his summit down suit, slowly but relentlessly clawing his way out of the bottom of the Khumbu Icefall toward Base Camp.
THE TIMELINE OF A MIRACLE
- May 29: Dawa goes missing at Yellow Band
- May 30 - June 2: No rescue initiated
- June 3: Helicopter search finds no trace
- June 4: Dawa crawls out of Icefall; RESCUED!
"He was found in a condition where he was slowly sliding down through the icefall. It is in itself an astonishing incident," said Pemba Sherpa, executive director of 8K Expeditions.
Elation and Recovery
News of Dawa's survival sent shockwaves of relief through the global climbing community. Chris Thrall, flying home via Delhi, expressed his immense joy on social media: "I'm elated and so happy for him and his wonderful family... Just flying home now... will write more when I land."
Photos soon emerged from Base Camp showing a weary Dawa resting and eating, still clad in his climbing gear. While he has suffered severe frostbite on his hands and fingers and speaks very slowly, attending doctors confirmed that he is stable and out of immediate danger. He was quickly airlifted from the Everest region to a hospital in Kathmandu for specialised treatment.
While Dawa's survival has restored immense hope, it leaves behind a sober warning. As the 2026 climbing season wraps up, the mountaineering community is facing a reckoning regarding permit-sharing practices, operator accountability, and the safety of the indispensable Sherpa guides who risk everything on the world's highest peak.
But for today, the focus is entirely on a family reunited, a community in gratitude to the SPCC rescue crew, and the man who defied the death zone to walk off Mount Everest alive.
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