The consequences of global warming have repeatedly made it possible to find the bodies of people who have disappeared in the high mountains for several decades. The latest of these discoveries occurred recently at the Stockji Glacier (Switzerland), reports Le Parisien.
Two French climbers who attended were captured by the bright colors in the snow. As they approached, they made out a tattered body. “It was a mummy. The cold of the glacier had frozen everything,” said Luc Lechanoine. The death could date back to the 1970s or 1980s, in fact a telescopic baton invented in 1974 lay next to the body. The macabre discovery is explained by global warming in the high mountains, where the thickness of the glacier matches the bottom of the crevasses from 40 years ago.
Bodies found long after
Some knowingly go looking, like Michel Baud, whose friend Jean-François Benedetti disappeared in 1976. After several attempts, he went to Glacier Long again in 2019 and saw an orange backpack in his camera’s zoom. The missing man’s body lay nearby.
In Zermatt (Switzerland) a file lists the names of more than 300 of those who disappeared in the high mountains. On the French side, the High Mountain Gendarmerie Platoon (PGHM) of Chamonix (Haute-Savoie) has a file that currently contains almost 150 names of people who have disappeared in the Alps since 1958.