One night in August, 45 years ago, two Japanese men attempting to ascend Matterhorn mountain in the Swiss Alps set up a hut to prepare for their climb the following day.
The next day, they disappeared.
Then, in September 2014, a climber spotted human bones on a shrinking glacier at an elevation of 9,186 feet. The remains were sent to a medical examiner for identification, according to the state police of Valais, Switzerland, and a DNA comparison confirmed they belonged to the two men.
Swiss forensic scientists, with the cooperation of Japan's consulate in Geneva, used DNA research to track down the climbers' family members. A Japanese official told Reuters they are making the "necessary arrangements according to the wishes of the families."
An official at Japan's consulate in Geneva identified the men as Michio Oikawa, born in 1947 and living in Chiba, Japan, at the time, and Masayuki Kobayashi, born in 1949 and living in Tokyo.
"They had spent the night before in a hut because they wanted to ascend the north face of the Matterhorn. They were probably surprised by a snow storm when they disappeared," cantonal police spokesperson Stephane Vouardoux told Reuters. "The snow storm lasted a few days which prevented the rescue teams from searching."
Valais police told Reuters that shrinking glaciers have led to the discovery of remains of not only these men, but also other missing climbers over the past few decades.
Due largely to manmade global warming, glaciers have been retreating rapidly around the world, including in the Alps. A recent study of glacier observations since 1850 showed that the world's glaciers are losing mass at an unprecedented rate. The study, produced by the World Glacier Monitoring Service and published in a peer reviewed scientific journal, found that glaciers may continue losing mass even if the global warming trend slows or stops.
In 2009, the Swiss parliament approved a preliminary measure to redraw its border with Italy near Matterhorn mountain due to melting glaciers, caused by warming temperatures, that have shifted a frontier fixed more than a century ago, Bloomberg News reported.
More than 500 people have lost their lives on Matterhorn since the first climb, which took place 150 years ago.