Melting Swiss Glaciers Reveal Bodies, Crashed Plane

Hikers may have found body of missing billionaire
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 9, 2022 6:42 PM CDT
Melting Glaciers Yield Bodies, Crashed Plane
The Aletsch glacier, like others in the Alps, is shrinking.   (Getty Images/dennisvdw)

Switzerland's melting glaciers have been giving up grim secrets amid Europe's heat wave. Two bodies have been found in recent weeks, along with the remains of a plane that crashed in 1968, the Guardian reports. A police spokesman said Monday that climbers scaling the Chessjen glacier found the skeletal remains of somebody who probably died in the 1970s or '80s. Authorities said the remains were found near a path that fell into disuse a decade ago and the climbers probably only made the find because they were using an outdated map. Around 300 people have gone missing in the Swiss Alps over the last century.

Last week, hikers found a mummifed body on the Stockji glacier, northwest of the Matterhorn, leading to speculation that it was German billionaire Karl-Erivan Haub, who disappeared during a ski excursion in 2018. The hikers, however, told German media that the clothes they found were neon-colored and looked like they were from the '80s. Bild reports that a guide on the Aletsch glacier, the largest in the Alps, found the wreckage of a Piper Cherokee last week. It crashed in June 1968, killing three people. The bodies were recovered at the time, but not the debris. (More glacier stories.)

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