The bodies of two Belgian climbers who vanished 34 years ago have finally been recovered from a melting glacier high in the Swiss Alps.
On July 26, a hiker discovered remains on the Trift Glacier, which sits above the small mountain village of Saas-Grund in the Valais region of southern Switzerland.
According to an official announcement issued by the Valais police on August 19, authorities took the bodies to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the Valais Hospital in Sion. DNA profiling then confirmed that the bodies belong to Belgian mountaineers Marcel Bastyns and Jos Van Deun, who went missing in the Weissmies area in 1992. The men were 39 and 41 years old when they disappeared.
The pair had set out to climb the 4,017m Weissmies, one of Switzerland’s well-known 4,000’ers. They began their trip on September 3, 1992, spent the night at the Weissmies Hut (2,726m), and left early the next morning, heading for the Almageller Hut. Their intended route went over the summit of Weissmies.
Extremely poor weather closed in during the ascent, and they never reached their destination. Later search efforts recovered only a rucksack. The DNA match closes a long-open case for the two families.
Trift Glacier, Switzerland. Photo: Wikipedia
According to the Valais police statement, the canton maintains a register of missing persons dating back to 1925. Most of these cases relate to the high mountains. Retreating glaciers have revealed several bodies in recent years. Last year, the remains of a climber missing since 1994 were found near Zermatt in the same canton.
