Share to ClassroomMelting Glacier Shows Climbers Lost in 1992
A hiker found two bodies on the Trift Glacier in southern Switzerland on 26 July. On Wednesday, police in the Wallis area said DNA tests showed who the men were. DNA is the code inside every body. They were two Belgian climbers who disappeared in the Weissmies mountains in 1992. The men were 39 and 41 years old at the time. Their bodies stayed in the ice for 34 years.
The ice in the Alps is getting smaller. Warmer weather makes glaciers melt faster. When the ice becomes thinner, it gives back things it has held for many years. Wallis police keep a list of missing people that starts in 1925. Most of them were lost in high mountains or in rivers. Police say that bodies from long ago are now found again and again.
For the police, an old mystery is now a clear case. The same thing happens in other places too. In Pakistan, melting ice gave back a man's body 28 years after he was lost. In 2025, people found the body of a British scientist who disappeared in Antarctica in 1959. In 2023, a German hiker was found in another Swiss glacier, almost forty years after he was lost.
