German hiker Thomas Flamm was 27 years old when, in the summer of 1990, he undertook a challenging solo trek through the Valais Alps of neighboring Switzerland. According to the German news outlet Deutsche Welle, Flamm was both an experienced hiker and mountaineer, who, despite planning to travel alone for days on end through the Swiss mountains, was deemed more than capable of navigating the rugged terrain. His route began at Mount Blanc, France, and was due to end in the Italian city of Domodossola, where he planned to meet up with a friend. However, Flamm never arrived. His mother reported him missing to the authorities, but in the months that followed investigators could find no trace of him, and the search was called off at the end of 1990.
Tragically, it took until 2022 — 32 years after Flamm's disappearance — for his friends and family to finally find out what happened to the missing hiker. As Deutsche Welle reports, in August of that year, two mountaineers were ascending Switzerland's Stockji glacier when they noticed colored objects that looked unnatural. On closer inspection, they saw Flamm's mummified body, frozen in the glacier, and later noted the '80s-style outfit of the deceased hiker. The two descended to alert the police, who recovered Flamm. Later, experts revealed that the glacier was especially soft at the time of Flamm's disappearance, possibly explaining how he had fallen through, while the glacier receding in recent years meant that his body had become exposed. His death was ruled a tragic accident.
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