The bodies of two Belgian hikers who went missing in the Swiss Alps over three decades ago have been found, after glaciers retreated because of climate change. In recent years, Switzerland’s glaciers have been melting at an increasing rate, leading to the emergence of remains of people who went missing in the region decades ago. Police in the southwestern Valais region maintain a database of everyone who has vanished over the last century.
The human remains were found by a hiker last month as the Trift glacier, south of the city of Lucerne, melted. The regional government said on Wednesday that this discovery led them to launch an operation to recover the remains. DNA tests identified them as two Belgian hikers who died at the ages of 39 and 41. They had gone missing near the Weissmies mountain in 1992.
A hiker discovered the remains on July 26 on the glacier in southern Switzerland, near the Italian border, according to police in the canton of Valais. The remains were taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Wallis Hospital in Sion for identification. “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.
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On September 4, 1992, the two men had set out from the Weissmies hut with the aim of climbing the summit of the Weissmies, at 4,017 metres, and had got as far as the Almagell hut. In the months that followed, several search operations were carried out, which led to the discovery of a rucksack, but not the hikers. Wallis police maintain a list of missing persons dating back to 1925, primarily concerning high mountains and rivers.
Global Warming Is Melting Glaciers
As the climate warms and glaciers melt, more and more such discoveries are being made. Three years ago, a body was found on a Swiss glacier near the Matterhorn. He was identified as a German mountaineer who had disappeared in 1986.
Global Warming And Melting Glaciers In Switzerland
Swiss glaciers are melting at an accelerated rate and have lost 24 per cent of their total volume between 2015 and 2025. According to data from GLAMOS (Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland), warming in the Swiss Alps is occurring at twice the global average rate. Swiss glaciers lost 10 per cent of their total ice mass in 2022 and 2023 a figure equal to all the ice lost between 1960 and 1990.
Several small glaciers have already vanished, with more than 1,000 of them completely gone. This year, active melting was reported at high altitudes because of the summer heatwave. Scientists estimate that even if humans succeed in significantly reducing carbon emissions, at least two-thirds of Alpine glacier volume will disappear by 2100.