{"id":117392,"date":"2026-08-19T12:30:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T12:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/117392\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T12:30:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T12:30:44","slug":"bodies-of-climbers-who-vanished-34-years-ago-found-in-swiss-alps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/117392\/","title":{"rendered":"Bodies of climbers who vanished 34 years ago found in Swiss Alps"},"content":{"rendered":"

The bodies of two Belgian climbers who disappeared in the Swiss Alps 34 years ago have been found, freed from the melting Trift Glacier, police said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

On July 26, a hiker reported finding two bodies on the glacier in southern Switzerland, near the Italian border, the regional police in Wallis canton said in a statement<\/a>. The bodies were taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Wallis Hospital in Sion for identification.<\/p>\n

“A direct comparison of DNA profiles has formally established that these are two mountaineers who went missing in the Weissmies region in 1992,” the statement said.<\/p>\n

The two Belgian men were 39 and 41 when they disappeared.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Trift suspension bridge and Trift Glacier in Switzerland are seen in this 2018 file photo. \/ Credit: BlueRed\/REDA\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Wallis police maintain a list of missing persons dating back to 1925, primarily in high mountains and rivers.<\/p>\n

“Due to the retreat of glaciers, the \u2026 remains of people who disappeared in the mountains several decades ago are repeatedly revealed,” police said in their statement Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Bodies exposed by melting glaciers in recent years<\/p>\n

Climate change has accelerated the melting of glaciers<\/a>, with the retreating ice releasing bodies of climbers it has held for years, often decades.<\/p>\n

Last year, the bones of a Swiss mountaineer who disappeared in 1994 were found on a glacier<\/a> on the Ober Gabelhorn mountain, also in Wallis.<\/p>\n

In August 2025, the\u00a0remains of a British researcher<\/a>\u00a0who vanished in 1959 in Antarctica were discovered amid rocks near a receding glacier on King George Island, located off the Antarctic Peninsula. Around the same time, a\u00a0missing man’s body<\/a>\u00a0was discovered on a melting glacier in Pakistan, 28 years after he went missing.<\/p>\n

In July 2024, the body of an\u00a0American mountaineer was found<\/a>\u00a022 years after he disappeared while scaling a snowy peak in Peru. The year before that, the\u00a0remains of a German climber<\/a>\u00a0who went missing in 1986 were recovered on a glacier in the Swiss Alps.<\/p>\n

In 2017, Italian mountain rescue crews\u00a0recovered the remains of hikers<\/a>\u00a0on a glacier on Mont Blanc’s southern face likely dating from the 1980s or 1990s. Just a few weeks later, the remains of a climber discovered in the Swiss Alps were identified as a British mountaineer who\u00a0went missing in 1971<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That same year, a shrinking glacier in Switzerland revealed the bodies of a frozen couple who\u00a0went missing in 1942<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The bodies of two Belgian climbers who disappeared in the Swiss Alps 34 years ago have been found,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[16],"tags":[50,57186,6678,39019,6942,6943],"class_list":["post-117392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alps","tag-alps","tag-melting-glaciers","tag-mountaineer","tag-regional-police","tag-southern-switzerland","tag-swiss-alps"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117122185929715211","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}