Two Belgian mountaineers went missing in September 1992 near the Weissmies, in Valais. They were aged 39 and 41. They set off from the Weissmies hut on 4 September in appalling weather, with the aim of climbing to the summit and descending to the Almagell hut. They never arrived. The search went on for months. A rucksack was found. And then, silence for thirty-four years.
On 26 July this year, the Trift Glacier in Saas-Grund released what it had been holding since 1992: two bodies. The families had been waiting since before mobile phones existed. DNA analysis confirmed it on 19 August: it was them.
It is a phenomenon that is already well known in Switzerland. The Valais Cantonal Police have kept a list of people missing in the mountains dating back to 1925. As the glaciers retreat, what was trapped there decades ago is coming back to the surface. Not as an anomaly, but as a silent and systematic consequence of global warming in the Alps.
You don’t always come back from the Alps. And sometimes, when you do come back, it takes thirty-four years.