He survived six days at 7,500 meters on Everest without oxygen, trapped in a crevasse, eating the chocolates he had in his pocket
Dawa Sherpa reached the summit of Everest in May 2026 and during the descent ran out of supplemental oxygen near Camp 3, at about 7,500 meters of altitude. That is where his trail was lost. For six days, search teams found nothing. His wife, Damu Sherpa, based in Kathmandu, began the funeral rites. The family was already mourning him.What happened during that time is what makes the story hard to process: Dawa spent approximately two and a half days trapped in an ice crevasse. He survived by chewing snow and eating the chocolates he had in the pockets of his jacket. Getting out of the crevasse was impossible for him until an avalanche deposited enough snow for him to climb to the surface. He then used ropes he found in the area to descend sections and walked at night, making his way toward base camp, until he was spotted crawling across a frozen waterfall eleven kilometers from the last point where anyone had seen him.Pemba Sherpa, chief executive of 8K Expeditions, the company that coordinated the search, described it as a “true self-rescue”. Dawa was evacuated by helicopter to a hospital in Kathmandu, where he received treatment for severe dehydration, frostbite, and a fracture. He is also known as Hillary Dawa Sherpa, a name he bears in honor of the mountaineer Edmund Hillary.
