On Wednesday, Chris Thrall, a climber and former British Royal Marine, posted a tribute on Instagram for Dawa Sherpa, thinking he had died on the mountain.In the video, Thrall recalled that Dawa Sherpa had “sat down for a rest with his backpack” as they descended from Camp 4, the highest campsite before the summit.
“And I turned and I said, ‘Hillary, are you okay, brother?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes, fine Chris, please go, go!'” Thrall said. “This is nothing new, you know, I’d go ahead, he’d go ahead.”
As Thrall went down he found a struggling Polish climber who was part of their group, and they continued descending together. But Dawa Sherpa never caught up with them.
“It had been a long summit push. What should have been five days to the summit and back took us 11 days, that’s how challenging the conditions were,” Thrall said.
“So, do I go back for Sherpa, who’s probably going to rock up and be fine, as he has done hundreds of times before?” he added.
One relative, Kung Sherpa, had expressed dissatisfaction over the pace of the search in an interview with Outside, an adventure sport publication.
The search, when it did commence, was launched by a company called 8K Expeditions, which eventually was able to airlift him to safety.