Remains of man missing for 31 years found by climbers on glacier

The remains of a climber who went missing in 1994 have been found on a Swiss glacier, police said.

Climbers ascending the Ober Gabelhorn mountain discovered human remains on Oct. 15, the southern Wallis region's cantonal police said in a statement. After receiving a report from the mountaineers, officers reached the site by helicopter to collect the remains and personal effects from the Ober Gabelhorn glacier.

The person was a Swiss citizen born in 1969, according to police.

Two climbers disappeared in the area on Nov. 4, 1994. One of the individuals was found in 2000, police said, adding that the discovery of the second mountaineer's remains solves the mystery of their disappearance.

The ascent of the Ober Gabelhorn, 13,330 feet high, is highly prized by experienced mountaineers.

Bodies exposed by melting glaciers in recent years

Rising global temperatures linked to human-driven climate change are causing glaciers to rapidly melt. As glaciers increasingly melt and recede around the world, there has been an increase in discoveries of the remains of hikers, skiers and other climbers who went missing decades ago.

In August, the remains of a British researcher who 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 missing man's body was discovered on a melting glacier in Pakistan, 28 years after he went missing.

In July 2024, the preserved body of an American mountaineer was found 22 years after he disappeared while scaling a snowy peak in Peru. A month before that, five frozen bodies were retrieved from Mount Everest —  including one that was just skeletal remains — as part of Nepal's mountain clean-up campaign on Everest and adjoining peaks Lhotse and Nuptse.

In 2023, the remains of a German climber who went missing in 1986 were recovered on a glacier in the Swiss Alps.

In 2017, Italian mountain rescue crews recovered the remains of hikers on 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 went missing in 1971.

That same year, a shrinking glacier in Switzerland revealed the bodies of a frozen couple who went missing in 1942. Police told local media that their bodies were discovered near a ski lift on the glacier by a worker for an adventure resort company.

In 2016, the bodies of a renowned mountain climber and expedition cameraman who were buried in a Himalayan avalanche in 1999 were found partially melting out of a glacier.

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