Mountaineer’s remains identified 6 decades after accident

VIENNA: The remains of a man discovered near an Austrian glacier have been identified as those of a German mountaineer who died almost 60 years ago, local police said today.

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

The German man’s bones, including part of a leg, were discovered last year in the Tyrol province in western Austria.

He was reported missing in March 1967 after he fell 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 crevasse at the time and bad weather forced them to break off the rescue mission.

In August 2024, a local inhabitant found the bones about 700m below the glacier in the Rotmoostal valley and alerted authorities.

After carrying out extensive DNA analyses of the human remains, forensic experts could “attribute them to a 30-year-old German from the Baden-Wuerttemberg region” who has been missing since 1967, police said.

“In recent years, the receding of glaciers across the Alps – in this case the Wasserfallferner glacier – has resulted in the discoveries of remains of sometimes long-missing mountaineers,” police spokesman Erwin Voegele told AFP.

“Such finds have also happened in neighbouring Switzerland and Italy but it is rare that the remains can be identified almost 60 years after the accident,” Voegele added.

In 2023, the remains of a German climber who went missing in 1986 were discovered on another Swiss glacier.

Austria is in danger of becoming largely “ice free” within 45 years, the country’s Alpine Club warned last year, reporting that in 2023 two glaciers shrank by more than 100m.