Sherpa guide missing for a week crawls back to Mount Everest base camp

A Sherpa guide has crawled back to base camp on Mount Everest a week after going missing.

Dawa Sherpa was last seen descending the mountain around 29 May, but he did not make it to the base camp even though his client did.

The pair were among the last climbers on Mount Everest as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled.

Dawa was found by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above base camp, said Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, which was coordinating the search.

He was carried down to safety and given food and water.

A rescue helicopter then flew him to HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu, where he was reunited with his wife and daughter - who had already begun funeral rituals for him.

"We first heard that he was still alive on the local news and from a person we know who called with the news that ... he is being brought down," his wife, Damu Sherpa, told the Associated Press news agency.

Although Dawa had been missing for a week, there was a delay in organising a search team and when helicopters were finally sent to look for him, they could not find him.

No reasons have been given for the delay.

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Dawa's teenage daughter, Mendo Lhamu Sherpa, said they were already on the second day of a funeral ritual, which lasts for several days.

"When we first heard about it [the rescue], we could not be sure if that person was indeed our father," Mendo Lhamu said. "So to be certain we asked for photos to be sent and then only we were sure and very happy."

The team that located Dawa was part of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, which lays the ladders and ropes on the route at the beginning of each climbing season and then removes them and cleans up the site after climbers have left.

Dawa, 52, works for a small Kathmandu-based company called Himalayan Traverse and he was guiding a Polish climber when he went missing.

Over 1,000 climbers and their guides scaled the 8,849m (28,032ft) mountain in May, making it the busiest climbing season ever for the world's highest mountain.

The season began late because a massive ice block on the route just above the base camp took around two weeks to clear.

(c) Sky News 2026: Sherpa guide missing for a week crawls back to Mount Everest base camp