Melting Swiss Glacier Reveals Body Of Climber Who Went Missing 37 Years Ago

A melting glacier in the Swiss Alps has revealed the body of a mountain climber who went missing 37 years ago. According to the BBC, the grisly discovery was made on July 12 by climbers hiking along the Theodul Glacier in Zermatt, Switzerland. 

The remains were sent to the forensic medicine unit at Valais Hospital in the nearby town of Sion. A DNA analysis then confirmed that they belonged to a 38-year-old climber who went missing on the mountain in 1986, the outlet reported. 

"DNA analysis enabled the identification of a mountain climber who had been missing since 1986. In September 1986, a German climber, who was 38 at the time, had been reported missing after not returning from a hike," the police said in a statement. 

The cops did not provide additional information on the climber's identity nor on the circumstances of his death. However, they published a picture of a long hiking boot and crampons emerging from the ice that had belonged to the missing person. 

"The receding glaciers are increasingly bringing in mountaineers, whose disappearance was reported decades ago," the officials said. 

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Meanwhile, according to the BBC, the Theodul glacier, like glaciers across the Alps, has shown a marked retreat in the last few years. Almost every summer, the melting ice reveals something, or someone, lost for decades. 

Last year the wreckage of a plane that crashed in 1968 emerged from the Aletsch glacier. In 2015, the remains of two young Japanese climbers who went missing on the Matterhorn in a 1970 snowstorm were found and their identities were confirmed through the DNA testing of their relatives. In 2014 the body of British climber Jonathan Conville, missing since 1979 on the Matterhorn, was also discovered by a helicopter pilot.