The bodies of two Belgian climbers missing for 34 years have emerged from the melting Trift Glacier in the Swiss Alps. Discovered on July 26, a hiker reported the find on the glacier located in southern Switzerland near the Italian border. Regional police in Wallis canton confirmed this in a statement.
The remains were sent to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Wallis Hospital in Sion for identification. According to the statement, DNA profiling confirmed these were the climbers who vanished in the Weissmies region back in 1992. The men were aged 39 and 41 at the time of their disappearance.
A photograph taken in 2018 shows the Trift suspension bridge and Trift Glacier, illustrating the challenging terrain. The Wallis police maintain a record of missing persons stretching back to 1925, with many lost in the high mountainous regions and rivers.
Police noted, ‘Due to the retreat of glaciers, remains of individuals who vanished in the mountains several decades ago often emerge.’ This alarming pattern underscores a broader trend linked to climate change.
Melting glaciers, accelerated by climate change, have increasingly unveiled the remains of climbers entombed for years. Last year, bones of a Swiss climber missing since 1994 emerged from a glacier on the Ober Gabelhorn, also in Wallis.
In August 2025, remains of a British researcher missing since 1959 were discovered near a diminishing glacier on King George Island, situated off the Antarctic Peninsula. Around that period, the body of a man missing for 28 years was found on a melting glacier in Pakistan.
Previously, in July 2024, the body of an American climber was located in Peru, 22 years after disappearing while ascending a snowy peak. In the year prior, a German climber lost in 1986 was recovered on a Swiss glacier.
In 2017, Italian mountain rescue crews retrieved remains on Mont Blanc’s southern glacier, believed to date from the late 20th century. Later that year, remains found in the Swiss Alps were identified as a British climber missing since 1971. Additionally, a shrinking glacier in Switzerland exposed the bodies of a couple missing since 1942.