Imagine being given up for dead on Mount Everest. Your family is mourning, your climbing partners are sharing tearful goodbyes, and then, six days later, you just… show up. That's the story of Dawa Sherpa, who recently walked back into camp after literally everyone thought he’d perished on the world's highest peak.
His secret? A cocktail of pure grit, some pocket chocolate, and a very slow, very determined slide down a mountain.
Dawa, a seasoned Sherpa, wasn't lost, as one might assume. He simply ran out of oxygen and had to stop. The mountain, as it tends to do, decided to make things interesting. He spent six days up there, battling frostbite, dehydration, and a broken bone. “I didn’t think I would be alive,” he told BBC Nepali, which, given the circumstances, seems like a perfectly reasonable thought process.
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Start Your News DetoxThe Unbelievable Descent
For the first two days, Dawa ate nothing. On the third, he started chewing ice. And then, the true miracle: he found chocolates in his pockets. Because apparently, even when facing certain death on Everest, a little unexpected sugar can make all the difference.
“As the oxygen ran out, I couldn’t walk,” he explained. So he slid. And walked. And slid some more. Avalanches threatened to finish the job more than once, but Dawa kept moving, inch by agonizing inch, through the snow, all night long, until he eventually stumbled close to base camp.
Chris Thrall, a climber who was the last to see Dawa before he vanished, described the experience as “kind of crazy one minute to be fighting back tears with his daughter, and then the next minute to see him crawling into town.” It’s hard to argue with that assessment.
Dawa's wife, Damu Sherpa, had already resigned herself to widowhood. “When I saw him for the first time, I was so surprised,” she said. “I can’t believe how he came back alive.” Which, if you think about it, is probably the most understated reaction to a husband returning from the literal dead. It’s a testament to the sheer, stubborn will of a man who refused to let Everest have the last word.
