A Nepali climber who survived over a week on Mount Everest said he “chewed ice” to keep himself alive, recuperating in a hospital after a miracle rescue that shocked the climbing world.
Dawa Sherpa, 57, was last seen in severe conditions on the high slopes of the world’s tallest peak on May 30 in one of the final climbs of the spring season.
His oxygen was used up and only a handful of climbers remained on the peak. Relatives had lost hope and thought he had perished on the mountain, and commenced regular mourning prayers.
“I thought I would die,” he told BBC Nepali from his hospital bed on Friday.
I thought this was how I was going to die. I was not lost. Oxygen was running short and I was falling behind. When the oxygen was gone, I couldn’t walk.
Stranded in cold conditions near Everest’s “death zone” where oxygen levels are dangerously low, Dawa Sherpa said he survived for days with hardly no food or water.
I didn’t eat anything for the first two days. Then I began to chew ice. It was hard on my teeth. “I chewed the ice hard,” he remarked.
He got by on a few chocs and nibbles he discovered in his pocket.
“I used to eat them and dip them in water,” he claimed.
“At one point I fell into a crevasse and climbed my way out,” Dawa Sherpa, nicknamed “Hillary” after the great climber Edmund Hillary, told others following his rescue.
– Anger and jubilation –
I stepped on the snow and got up and glanced up… “I thought I could get out of there,” he said.
“Then I looked for ropes and I found one. Then I grabbed on to it and walked… I came down finally.”
On the morning of June 4, he was found crawling towards base camp by the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC), a Nepali crew that helps set routes on Everest and clean up trash left behind.
“Boys from SPCC used to come to collect the waste. I saw them. “They took me down.”
Doctors claimed he was airlifted to Kathmandu for treatment of frostbite, severe dehydration and a broken thigh bone.
“He’s doing good. “We had a talk,” his daughter Mendo Lhamu Sherpa told AFP.
His survival has brought joy to fellow climbers but anger from family members who said rescue teams should have found him sooner.
“It’s an extraordinary survival but it raises serious concerns about climber safety,” said Fur Gelje Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
“It’s irresponsible and inhumane to abandon a person,” he remarked. “I think an investigation committee should be constituted to bring the responsible persons to book for this,” he said.
Rinji Sherpa, an Everest guide from the same village as Dawa Sherpa, claimed the climber was well experienced and understood the perils of high-altitude mountaineering.
“He’s very lucky, he’s had a few close calls before but he’s come through,” he remarked.
At least five climbers — two Indians and three Nepalis — died in this year’s Everest season.
More than 1,000 climbers reached the summit of Everest this season, the most ever, according to early Nepali government estimates.