A Sherpa Went Missing on Everest. Nobody Lifted a Finger. He Crawled Into Base Camp.

NEWS CLIP: "A Nepali Sherpa has been found alive after nearly a week without food or water." The world proclaimed a miracle on Everest after Hillary Dawa Sherpa crawled into Base Camp after disappearing seven days earlier. Some of us immediately began asking questions about the reality of the Everest industry. How is it that a Sherpa went missing for five days and meanwhile the ropes and ladders were pulled, no rescues or searches were called, nothing? Even his family was in their second day of funeral rites.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

An Apali Sherpa has been found alive on Mount Everest after surviving almost a week without food or bottled oxygen. While the world proclaimed a miracle after Hilary Dawa Sherpa crawled into base camp after having gone missing for seven days on Mount Everest, many of us in the community immediately began asking questions about an Everest industry that would have ever let that happen at all. How is it that a sherpa went missing and meanwhile all the ropes and all the ladders were pulled from the Kumbu ice fall, essentially taking away any possibility of survival of that man? Yes, therein is the miracle part. But no rescues were called, no searches were levied, nothing. Just silence and all the teams pulled off the mountain. Thank goodness for the Sagarmartha Pollution Control Committee who remained behind to do a garbage cleanup and pulling all the refuse that remained on the mountains. If they weren't there, who knows what would have happened to Dawa Sherpa? So the label miracle is a tactical error, but granted, it sells papers, it gets news headlines, it grabs attention, and everybody wants to hear about the incredible story of survival, likening it to Doug Scott crawling off the ogre in 1977. Or Joe Simpson crawling out of a crevasse at the bottom of Sioux la Grande in 1985. It does allow most of the people to walk away with a good conscience, that good things happen on the mountain. After all, after a record-breaking season, more than a thousand people climbed to the summit. But the one number that will stand out, and hopefully this is where the reckoning will begin, that one individual was left behind and people knew he was alive and needed help. So this isn't about pointing fingers at individuals or at expedition operators, but to tell a story and hopefully some things will be changed on the mountain because of Hillary Dawa Sherpa's survival. And as time has gone on, one becomes familiar with the industry of Everest, how the wheels keep turning, and the people who pay the ultimate price, the Sherpa and the mountain workers, are mentioned and championed, but are they really being taken care of? So this really, for all intents and purposes, it was the logical conclusion of a system that prioritizes commercial velocity over human lives. His name is Dawa Sherpa. He was nicknamed Hilary Dawa, a name that comes with incredible irony given his survival and how the world stopped to watch as he was rescued from the mountain. He's 57. I've seen in other places that he was 52. He was originally hired on this expedition team to be a cook at Camp 2 that's essentially advanced base camp in the Western Coombe. You've seen many photographs of it below, Veloze face, but apparently a designated guide failed to show up. So Dawa was sent into action to go up higher. There was a failed summit attempt, and the person he was keeping an eye on, a Polish climber, descended ahead of him, as did this exceptional individual, Chris Thrall, who developed a close friendship and relationship with Dawa along the way. Rightly so, saying this before I take you to a short clip of Chris, when Chris still believed that Dawa had died, and before he went to visit the family, to tell them he would do whatever he could to assist in the education of their daughter. It's important to know that Chris left to go down the mountain to save his own hide. He made the right decision. This is nothing that could ever be pinned on Chris or the Polish climber who has not been named at this point in time. Let's just take a quick clip of Chris as he recalls looking back up and seeing Dawa up there before this event ensued.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

I quote unquote successfully summited Mount Everest, I believe it was May the 29th, around about 5 p.m. Tragically, um on the way back down we lost one of our Sherbers. I descended from the summit with another Sherpa. We came across my fellow client, um very nice Polish chap, and uh he was uh battling with frostbite. What was becoming severe frostbite in his fingers. It was also extremely cold. The next morning that client left with the Sherper I dissented with, I'm avoiding names here obviously, and I was left alone with Hillary uh Hillary Sherpa or Hillary Gower Sherpa as he's better known. Uh in the death zone up there at Camp 4. We got ourselves together and we started to descend to what's closer to the camp two. Uh round about above uh the yellow belt. Please don't quote me on any of this. It's my memory is uh my knowledge of Everest isn't probably what everybody else has. But I remember he sat down as he had done many times before when we'd been partnered up together. We kind of you know our shirkers were interchangeable, you could say. And he sat down for a rest with his um the backpack, these guys carry huge loads. And I turned and I said, Hillary, are you okay, brother? He says, Yes, yes, fine, Chris. Please go, go. This was nothing new, you know. I'd go ahead, he'd go ahead. This was um you know, part part of the cause of uh my experience. The weather was so changeable, so bitter, one minute it's it's a whiteout, the next minute it's it's uh a whiteout and it's snowing, the ropes and stuff were getting covered over, and I realized we had a really serious situation. And uh in none of that time at all, when I look back up the mountain, uh did I see Hillary descend. To say serious alarm bells were ringing, as in I think the worst has happened, would be an understatement.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

The company that Dawa was working for, that Chris Thrall was on and the Polish Climber was on, was essentially subcontracting with a larger expedition operator, very well-known and successful guiding outfit. And what they do in these instances is join into a permit so they can operate essentially separately, sharing some infrastructure but operating as a different entity. And this is where things get a little bit murky, and where I would imagine the government of Nepal, the Department of Tourism will ultimately probably want to do some deep digging and find out if this is really a good fit at all for Mount Everest, given the large numbers of people who keep returning each year. Hilary Dawa and his team they left Camp 4 for a last-minute summit push. Essentially, the mountain was closing on or about that day. Chris Thrall went on to climb to the summit, but the Polish climber and Dawa turned around, and that's essentially where the story begins, more or less, because this is where Chris Thrall last saw Dawa as he made his way down to Camp 3 and then continued his way down to Camp 2. By the time he got to Camp 2, there was no sign of Hillary Dawa Sherpa. And so what would normally happen in a situation like this is an expedition operator would send a team of high-altitude mountain guides or sherpa to go up and get Hillary Dawa before anything else happens. The climbers, the clients, yes, absolutely, they moved down the mountain, but nothing should have changed until they went and located Hillary Dawa. That did not happen. Everybody got down to base camp. The SPCC pulled the ropes, pulled the ladders from the ice fall. And no searches, no rescue plans were called for several days. This is shocking, to be completely honest. It's almost mind-boggling that nobody said we can't pull those ladders until the last man is down. Ultimately, by May 31st, the ladders and ropes were totally pulled from the mountain. There was really no word about the whereabouts of Hilary Dawa Sherpa, other than news reports saying there was a Sherpa missing. Over the next day or two, many people and entities presumed him dead. Even Chris Thrall had gone to visit the daughter and wife to talk to them about how he could help in the education of the daughter and help with the family. Now there was a little bit of a dispute going on behind the scenes. There was a primary expedition operator and a subcontractor, and the subcontractor was arguing that the larger expedition operator was ultimately responsible for Dawa and therefore was responsible for calling in a rescue. And the larger expedition operator said, We only assist with the permit process, not organizing your expedition. But still, there was no decisive action taken for a rescue. Five days pass with no operation or rescue mounted. And then public attention began going toward the mountain, and Hillary Dawa's family began to demand action. What's happened to our father, to my husband? And they're angry. And now everybody believing he's dead, they begin their funeral rites. The family is in the second day of their funeral in Nepal. This is a very sacred time where monks come and they pray and they chant, and this is a very hallowed time, at which time the daughter gets a text message. And she says, I don't believe you. And somebody sent a photograph of Hilary Dawa Sherpa in Basecamp alive. Obviously, she was shocked. The funeral rites are stopped, and Hilary Dawa made it back to Basecamp. Absolutely incredible survival story. In that right, a true miracle. But now the family is demanding that there be action and accountability. How could our Hilary Dawa be left up there to die with nobody looking after him? Now imagine here's Hilary Dawa Sherpa crawling down from camp four, or maybe at that time still walking and upright getting down through the western coomb, no tents, no ropes, no ladders. Can you imagine that sense of desolation and complete loss of hope that would overwhelm you? They call the western coomb the Valley of Silence because it is without any sound other than an occasional avalanche or a rock falling. As you can see from this photograph, now imagine Hilary Dawa Sherpa getting to this crevasse without a ladder, an absolutely insurmountable place to be when you are trying to survive. Apparently, from the story, he falls into this deep crevasse. He was in there for over two days, surviving on small little biscuits, eating sparingly, melting ice in his mouth for hydration, waiting for a rescue, expecting that, nothing happens. So a small avalanche begins to fill into the crevasse, and what he does is crawl on top of the snow, and enough snow fell in that he was able to climb out of the crevasse. Incredible! And so he begins after that a slow, solitary descent toward base camp. Obviously, tired, hungry, dehydrated. Six days after that, 8K expeditions, they launch uh an aerial search operation and they fly right over his head. Of course, they're thinking he's up the mountain. He waves up to the helicopter, they don't see him, and at which time he emerges from the bottom of the Kumbu ice fall in a place called Krampon Point. That's where you put your crampons to go up the mountain, or you take them off when you're done with the Kumbu Ice Fall section, and then you're crossing the flat level area of the Kumbu uh glacier to go to base camp. That's where he was seen by some workers from the SPCC and rescued. SPCC staff Bim Batarae and Durga Rai. They find Hilary Dawa near Krampon Point on the glacier. He's crawling towards base camp, no boots, wearing his suit obviously ragged. He's frostbitten and speaking very slowly, weak but conscious. He's assisted, you could see he's put on a back and brought down to the nearby village of Gorek Shep, still on a good day, a three-plus hour, maybe a two-hour walk. He's being carried on someone's back. Helicopter airlifts him to Hams Hospital, Kathmandu, and the doctors immediately get to work on him. And now the family, Dahmu Sherpa, I want justice. Dawa went missing on May 29th. We immediately contacted concerned authorities, but they all turned a deaf ear. The government is celebrating a record revenue, as she said, over 1 billion rupees. It's like eight, nine million dollars in permit fees alone. Imagine if a foreigner, she said, not Dawa, was left alone on Everest. What would the reaction have been? A beautifully and perfectly said thought. That's the wife, Dahmu Sherpa of Dawa, or the daughter, Mendo Lamu Sherpa. She said, we had already started his funeral ritual today, is the second day. And now the family has officially announced the intention to file a legal action against all parties involved in the negligence. And as it would turn out, there was a very tense confrontation at the hospital between the family members and the expedition operator. The family is angry and they want justice. So let this video be just the beginning where questions need to be asked and there needs to be some way to have accountability. Now you're beginning to see this Everest business and why for many, many, many videos, I harp on the undercurrents of what's really taking place on the mountain. Yes, there are Western wealthy clients going on the mountain, but a lot of the underbelly of it is taking place in the grassroots locally and in these low budget expedition operators who are gloming onto bigger expedition companies and using those permits to offer cheaper, lower budget expeditions. And in those cheaper expeditions, these are the companies that are less likely to be providing the best help for their mountain workers and their Sherpa. Meanwhile, uh Norbu Tenzing Norgay, the son of Tenzing Norgay, said this story crystallizes what Everest has become and the treatment of mountaineering workers. This story of Hilary Dawa Sherpa could stretch out for some time. And I pray, I hope that Hilary Dawashirpa never has to work on that mountain again. I hope that he is made well known and receives a fee for a book to be written about him. He should not have to go back up there and work like that at the age of 52 or 57. I want to know what you think. I hope that you'll leave your thoughts in the comments below. And if you're still watching, be sure to click the subscribe button if you haven't done so already. And also check out the tons of exclusive content in the members section. 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