The body of a German climber who has been missing since 1986 has been identified from human remains discovered on a glacier near Switzerland’s famous Matterhorn.
The discovery is the most recent in a series of long-kept secrets that the Alpine glaciers, now rapidly melting due to climate change, have revealed.
Climbers traversing the Theodul glacier above Zermatt earlier this month discovered the body.
They noticed crampons and a hiking boot poking through the ice.
A German climber who disappeared 37 years ago was identified by DNA testing on the body.
At the time, an extensive search and rescue operation failed to find any trace of him.
The climber, who was 38 when he went missing while out hiking, was not named by the police.
As with glaciers throughout the Alps, the Theodul glacier has demonstrated a noticeable retreat over the past few years. It is part of Zermatt’s famous year round ski region, the highest in Europe.
But the alpine ice fields are especially sensitive to global warming. The Theodul and its neighbor, the Gorner glacier, were once joined until the 1980s, but the two have now split apart.
Almost every summer, something or someone that has been lost for decades is revealed by the melting ice. The wreckage of a plane that crashed in 1968 were discovered last year in the Aletsch glacier.
Source-BBC
