BURSTThe mystery surrounding a mountaineer who disappeared more than three decades ago in the Swiss Alps has finally been solved. Police in the southern Wallis region announced that human remains discovered on Oct. 15 by climbers on Ober Gabelhorn have been identified as those of a Swiss man born in 1969. The climbers alerted authorities after finding the remains on a glacier, prompting officers to reach the remote site by helicopter to recover the body.
The discovery fills in the last missing piece of a disappearance dating back to Nov. 4, 1994, when two climbers went missing in the same area. One of the men was located in 2000, but the second remained unaccounted for, until now. Police said the latest find resolves the decades-long case. Ober Gabelhorn is a popular peak, but its slopes and glaciers have claimed several lives over the years.
The recovery also follows a growing pattern in high altitude areas, as glaciers melt and receed due to rising global temperatures, long-lost climbers and skiers are reemerging. Recent years have seen the remains of individuals missing for decades uncovered in locations ranging from Antarctica to the Himalayas. In 2024, climbers in Peru found the preserved body of an American mountaineer who disappeared 22 years earlier, while Nepal’s clean-up campaign on Everest revealed five frozen bodies. Similar discoveries have unfolded in Pakistan, the Swiss Alps and on Mont Blanc, where melting ice has exposed missing climbers from as far back as the 1940s.
Around the world, each summer brings new reports of climbers whose fates were previously unknown. The latest recovery on Ober Gabelhorn adds one more story to that list, and, for one family, offers some closure.
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