Melting glacier ice reveals frozen body of climber who vanished 37 years ago

DNA tests have confirmed that a body recently found on a glacier southeast of the famed Matterhorn peak in Switzerland is that of a German mountaineer who disappeared 37 years ago.

Police in southwestern Switzerland said Thursday that a group of mountaineers found the body of the 38-year-old German man who went missing in September 1986.

On July 12, mountaineers on the Theodul glacier near the Italian border found the remains of the man, which were then transported to a nearby hospital for analysis. Genetic tests confirmed the man’s identity, which was not made public by the regional police.

Swiss climatologists and other experts say the country’s glaciers have been melting at accelerated rates in recent years, attributing it in part to climate change caused by human activity, UK media reported.

Last year another melting Swiss glacier revealed the body of a man, believed to be that of a billionaire missing since 2018. Karl-Erivan Haub, 58, disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Zermatt, Switzerland when he was training for a ski mountaineering race under the Matterhorn peak.

He was last seen on the morning of April 7, 2018, as he headed up a mountain lift but the alarm was raised the following morning after he failed to show up at his hotel in the Swiss resort of Zermatt. His body was never found and he was declared formally dead three years later.

Record heat waves across Europe last summer melted part of the Stockji glacier in the Valais canton, near the Swiss mountain resort town of Zermatt, revealing human remains. German media speculated they could be Haub, who was one of the country’s wealthiest people, but this has never been confirmed.