Bodies of two hikers missing for decades found after Swiss glacier melts

The bodies of two Belgian men who went missing in the Swiss Alps in 1992 have been discovered after being exposed by the melting of a glacier, police have said.

A hiker discovered the bodies on 26 July on the Trift Glacier, south of the Swiss city of Lucerne, officials said.

DNA analysis later confirmed them to be those of two mountaineers who went missing 34 years ago near the Weissmies mountain, police said. They were aged 39 and 41 at the time of their disappearance.

Many scientists attribute a rapid retreat in Switzerland's glaciers - which shrunk by a quarter in the decade to 2025, according to Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (Glamos) - to climate change.

Police in Switzerland's Valais region said in a statement that they had organised a recovery operation following the discovery of the two men's bodies and transferred them to a hospital in the canton's capital, Sion, for identification.

Peaking at over 4,000 metres, the Weissmies mountain - which the two men went missing in the vicinity of - is a popular mountaineering spot in the Saas Valley.

Regional officials maintain a database of missing people dating back to 1925. The majority of people on it disappeared in the moutains, or in rivers and other bodies of water, police said.

The force noted that this was not the first time that the melting of glaciers had exposed the remains of people who had gone missing several decades prior.

In 2023, human remains found on a glacier close to Switzerland's famed Matterhorn were confirmed to be those of a German climber who had been missing since 1986.

The rate of glacier shrinkage has been increasing globally since the 1990s and at a particularly accelerated rate since 2000, according to the European Commission's monitoring body Copernicus.

This melting has been particularly pronounced in Switzerland. Data from Glamos reported a further glacier reduction of 3% across 2025, following record years of ice loss in 2022 and 2023.

The upward trend in global average temperatures has brought unseasonably warm weather to Switzerland's higher altitudes, and a reduction in snow has imperilled some of its ski resorts and competitions.