Photo not related to article. [AFP]
Photo not related to article. [AFP]

The remains of two Belgian mountaineers who went missing in the Swiss Alps 34 years ago have been found in a melting glacier.

A hiker discovered two bodies protruding from the ice at the Trift Glacier near Saas-Grund in southern Switzerland on July 26 and alerted authorities, according to CBS News, Swiss public international broadcaster SWI Swissinfo and other media.

Swiss police recovered the remains and transferred them to the forensic institute at the Valais Hospital in Sion for identification.

"Direct comparison of DNA profiles clearly confirmed that the two individuals are the mountaineers who went missing in the Weissmies area in 1992," police said. The two were Belgian nationals who were 39 and 41 years old at the time of their disappearance.

The pair had set out from the Weissmies hut on Sept. 4, 1992, aiming for the 4,017-meter summit of Weissmies, but vanished after encountering severe weather. A months-long search turned up only a single backpack.

"As glaciers retreat, the remains of people who went missing in the mountains decades ago are repeatedly being uncovered," police said.

This is not the first such discovery. In 2023, the body of a German climber who disappeared in 1986 was recovered from the Theodul Glacier near the Matterhorn.

Last August, the remains of a British researcher who went missing in 1959 were found among rocks beside a retreating glacier on King George Island in Antarctica. Around the same time, the body of a person missing for 28 years emerged from a melting glacier in Pakistan. In July 2024, the remains of an American mountaineer who vanished 22 years earlier were found on a snow-covered peak in Peru.

Meanwhile, Switzerland lost 3 percent of its total glacier volume in 2025 alone, according to an annual report released last October by the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network, known as GLAMOS. It was the fourth-largest annual decline since monitoring began, behind only 2022, 2023 and 2003.


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