Discovery of Missing Climbers’ Bodies in Swiss Alps

The bodies of two Belgian climbers who disappeared 34 years ago in the Swiss Alps have been found. Police in the Wallis region announced the discovery on Wednesday, noting that melting from the Trift Glacier had freed the remains.

On July 26, a hiker reported discovering the bodies on the glacier in southern Switzerland, near the Italian border. The remains were quickly transferred 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 police statement noted.

The climbers were identified as Belgian men aged 39 and 41 at the time of their disappearance. A photograph from 2018 shows the Trift suspension bridge and the glacier, highlighting ongoing glacier retreat.

Wallis police maintain records of missing persons dating back to 1925, focusing largely on cases in high mountain areas and rivers. They have stated, “Due to the retreat of glaciers, the remains of people who disappeared in the mountains several decades ago are repeatedly revealed.”

Effects of Melting Glaciers

Climate change has significantly contributed to glacier melting. This environmental shift has frequently uncovered bodies of climbers that have lain hidden in the ice for many years, and sometimes for decades.

In 2025, a British researcher’s body, missing since 1959, was located near a retreating glacier on King George Island in Antarctica. Similarly, in Pakistan, a man’s remains were discovered on a melting glacier 28 years after he disappeared.

The previous year, the body of an American mountaineer was found in Peru, 22 years after vanishing. A German climber who went missing in 1986 was recovered from a Swiss Alp glacier the year prior.

In 2017, rescue teams uncovered hikers’ remains on Mont Blanc’s glacier, dating potentially from the 1980s or 1990s. That same year, shrinking glaciers in Switzerland revealed several bodies, including a British mountaineer who vanished in 1971 and a couple missing since 1942.