Swiss glaciers reveal secrets through heat: human bones and plane wreckage loom | Abroad

After a winter with relatively little snowfall, the Swiss Alps are experiencing a hot summer. With two heat waves already behind us, it is very hot there. Alpinists have already been advised against climbing certain mountains because of the heat. Normally it already freezes in summer in the Alps at an altitude of about 3000 to 3500 meters, but according to measurements, this only happened in July at an altitude of about 5184 meters. The result: ancient glaciers begin to melt, and hard.

Last week, two French mountaineers found human bones on the Chessjen glacier, local police reported. It may be someone who died in the 70s or 80s, since only bones have been found, thinks Dario Andenmatten, overseer of mountain hut Britannia. The mountaineers are said to have found the remains on an old trail that has not been used for about ten years. The alpinists may have used an outdated map, says Andenmatten. The skeleton was recovered by helicopter later in the day.

A week earlier, a body was also found near the Swiss Stockji Glacier. German media write that it may be a supermarket magnate with German, Russian and American nationality: Karl-Erivan Haub. On April 7, 2018, Haub went missing while skiing in the Zermatt region, where the Stockji Glacier is located. Haub was pronounced dead in 2021.

It is not yet clear whether it is actually the body of the supermarket magnate. One of the hikers who found the body told the Swiss newspaper Blick that was wrapped around the body neon-colored clothing ‘in the style of the 80s’. The body was still ‘largely intact’.

In both cases, according to the police, it will take ‘a few more days’ before the bodies can be identified by means of DNA testing. The police in the Alpine region keeps a list of all people who have gone missing in the area since 1925. There are now about 300 people on this list.

The bodies aren’t the only secrets the Alps are revealing this hot summer. In the first week of August, for example, a plane wreck was found near the Aletsch Glacier. Mountain guide Dominik Nellen did not know what he saw: “I thought I saw two backpacks.”

A closer look revealed parts of the Piper Cherokee plane, which had crashed in the area on June 30, 1968. The bodies of the occupants – a teacher, chief of medical services, and his son, all from Zurich – had been found at the time, but the wreckage was untraceable.