The remains of a German mountaineer who disappeared in September 1986 in the Swiss Alps have been discovered in a glacier near Zermatta town near the border with Italy, as reported today by the police of the canton of Valais (southwest), where the discovery was made.
Laboratory analysis of the DNA of the human remains, found together with fragments of the equipment carried by the victim, They have confirmed the identity of the mountaineer, who was 38 years old at the time of the fatal accident, according to the Swiss national agency ATS.
The usual retreat of glaciers in summer, although accelerated in recent years due to global warming, sometimes allows these findings in areas such as the Swiss Alps, where these remains were found on July 12 on the Theodule glacier.
Experts later examined the remains at the Valais Hospital in Sion, the cantonal capital, in collaboration with the judicial identification section of the local police. Dozens of mountaineers have lost their lives in recent decades in the vicinity of Zermatt, a mecca for mountaineeringespecially on the slopes of the mythical Matterhorn peak (also known as Cervino), a true symbol of Switzerland despite the fact that the southern slope of this 4,478-meter mountain is in Italy.
