The remains of a mountaineer who had disappeared in 1986 were found in the Theodul Glacier in Zermatt in southwestern Switzerland. The discovery was made possible by the gradual retreat of ice caused by global warming: it is a phenomenon that affects all Alpine glaciers and which now allows bodies and other objects to emerge with a certain frequency that had been covered by ice even for decades.
The body was found last July 12 by two mountaineers who were crossing the Teodulo glacier, located in the Canton of Valais, a few kilometers from the Matterhorn, in an area where you can ski even in summer. The climbers had noticed a boot and some crampons emerging from the ice: DNA analyzes carried out on the remains later showed that it was a German man declared missing 37 years ago. Extensive searches had been conducted at the time to find it, but to no avail. The Swiss police did not identify him and did not provide details on the circumstances of his death; however, he said that at the time he disappeared he was 38 years old.
Already in August 2022 on the Stockji glacier, also in Zermatt, the remains of another German mountaineer had been found who went missing in 1990, when he was 27 years old, after leaving Chamonix to get to Domodossola via the Pennine Alps. Also last year, the wreckage of an airplane that had crashed in the area in 1968 had re-emerged in the Aletsch glacier, the largest in the Alps. In 2015, due to the progressive melting of the Matterhorn glacier, the bodies of two Japanese hikers who had disappeared in a snowstorm in the 1970s.
The year before, the body of Jonathan Conville, an English mountaineer who had been missing since 1979, had also been found in the area: his remains had been observed by the pilot of a helicopter who was transporting food to a refuge on the Matterhorn.
Like other Alpine glaciers, the Theodulus glacier has also begun to retreat in recent years. It has been estimated that between 2001 and 2022 the Swiss glaciers shrank by about a third in terms of volume, and that in 2022 alone they shrank by 6 percent: twice as much as in 2021 and the worst figure since it began to be tracked more than a century ago.
The melting of glaciers is a problem that obviously also concerns Italy. The volume of the Marmolada glacier decreased by 30 percent between 2004 and 2014 alone, and according to a 2019 study, it will disappear completely by 2050. Since then, however, the situation has worsened so much that according to researcher Renato Colucci, professor of glaciology at the University of Trieste, the Marmolada glacier could disappear within twenty years.
It is estimated that the progressive increase in the global average temperature will lead to the disappearance of most of the Alpine glaciers below 3,600 meters of altitude by the end of the century.
– Read also: The retreat of the ice can teach us things about our past