Retreating Glacier on Matterhorn Gives Up Climber’s Body After 34 Years

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jon conville
Jonathan Conville.  Photograph: Courtesy Of The Conville Family

In 1979, 27-year-old Jon Conville went missing on the Matterhorn in Switzerland.  34 years later, his body showed up as cloth and bones at the toe of a retreating glacier at the base of the Matterhorn.  The Guardian, has the story.

Retreating Alpine glacier gives up another body after 34 years

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Jonathan Conville, 27, vanished from the Matterhorn in 1979. Now, as the ice melts, his remains join finds dating back 5,000 years

As one of the world’s best-known mountain rescue helicopter pilots, Gerold Biner is used to spotting things on glaciers that shouldn’t be there. Flying under the north face of the Matterhorn last summer, he saw at the edge of the ice that flows beneath the mountain some equipment, clearly abandoned. Inside the clothing were bones, and a name tag with one word: Conville.

When the remains arrived at the laboratory of forensic pathologist Bettina Schrag, she put the name into Google and discovered thewebsite of a charity set up in memory of a young British climber who disappeared after falling from high on the Matterhorn in 1979. “As soon as I saw the email was from a Swiss pathology laboratory,” says his sister, Melissa, “I knew they’d found Jonathan.”

Read the full article here:

Retreating Alpine glacier gives up another body after 34 years


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