Bodies of climbers who vanished 34 years ago found on melting glacier in Swiss Alps

The bodies of two Belgian climbers who disappeared in the Swiss Alps 34 years ago have been found, freed from the melting Trift Glacier, police said Wednesday.

On July 26, a hiker reported finding two bodies on the glacier in southern Switzerland, near the Italian border, the regional police in Wallis canton said in a statement. The bodies 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.

The two Belgian men were 39 and 41 when they disappeared.

Wallis police maintain a list of missing persons dating back to 1925, primarily in high mountains and rivers.

“Due to the retreat of glaciers, the … remains of people who disappeared in the mountains several decades ago are repeatedly revealed,” police said in their statement Wednesday.

Bodies exposed by melting glaciers in recent years

Climate change has accelerated the melting of glaciers, with the retreating ice releasing bodies of climbers it has held for years, often decades.

Last year, the bones of a Swiss mountaineer who disappeared in 1994 were found on a glacier on the Ober Gabelhorn mountain, also in Wallis.

In August 2025, the remains of a British researcher who vanished in 1959 in Antarctica were discovered amid rocks near a receding glacier on King George Island, located off the Antarctic Peninsula. Around the same time, a missing man’s body was discovered on a melting glacier in Pakistan, 28 years after he went missing.

In July 2024, the body of an American mountaineer was found 22 years after he disappeared while scaling a snowy peak in Peru. The year before that, the remains of a German climber who went missing in 1986 were recovered on a glacier in the Swiss Alps.

In 2017, Italian mountain rescue crews recovered the remains of hikers on a glacier on Mont Blanc’s southern face likely dating from the 1980s or 1990s. Just a few weeks later, the remains of a climber discovered in the Swiss Alps were identified as a British mountaineer who went missing in 1971.

That same year, a shrinking glacier in Switzerland revealed the bodies of a frozen couple who went missing in 1942.