Human remains found near a glacier in Austria have been identified as those of a German climber who died nearly 60 years ago, local police said Thursday.
Climate change has accelerated the melting of glaciers, with the ice releasing the bodies of climbers who have been there for years, often decades.
The bones of the German man, including part of a leg, were found last year in the Tyrol region of western Austria.
He was reported missing in March 1967 after falling into a crevasse while crossing the Wasserfallferner glacier on skis with a companion, local police told AFP.
Search teams were unable to retrieve him from the deep sinkhole at the time and bad weather forced them to call off the rescue mission.
In August 2024, a local resident found the bones about 2,300 feet below the glacier in the Rotmoostal valley and alerted the authorities.
Martin Zwick/REDA/Universal Imaging Group via Getty Images
After carrying out extensive DNA analyzes of the human remains, forensic experts “could identify them to a 30-year-old German from the Baden-Wuerttemberg region” who has been missing since 1967, he said. the police.
“In recent years, the retreat of glaciers across the Alps – in this case the Wasserfallferner glacier – has led to the discovery of the remains of sometimes lost climbers,” said a Police officer Erwin Voegele spoke to AFP.
“Similar discoveries have also taken place in neighboring Switzerland and Italy but the remains are rarely identified nearly 60 years after the disaster,” Voegele said.
Austria is at risk of becoming largely “ice-free” within 45 years, the country's Alpine Club warned last year, reporting that in 2023 two glaciers will travel more than 100 meters.
Melting glaciers reveal the remains of hikers, climbers
As glaciers melt and retreat, which many scientists blame on global warming, there has been an increase in the discovery of the remains of hikers, -ski and other Alpines that went missing decades ago.
Last July, a preserved body of American climber William Stampfl – who disappeared more than two decades ago while scaling a snowy peak in Peru – was was found after being exposed by melting ice caused by climate change. He was reported missing in 2022 when an avalanche buried his climbing group on Mount Huascaran, which is more than 22,000 feet high.
In September 2023, the remains of a German climber who went missing in 1971 found on a Swiss glacierTwo months before that, the remains of another German climber who went missing in 1986 were also found in Switzerland. The police did not name that climber publish a picture of hiking boots and gear sticking out of the snow that apparently belonged to the missing man.
In August 2017, Italian mountain rescue teams recovered the remains of hikers on a glacier on the south face of Mont Blanc probably dating back to the 1980s or 1990s.
The month before, a receding glacier in Switzerland revealed the frozen bodies of a couple who he went missing in 1942.
