After Three Decades Inside Ice, a Lost Father Is Found in Northern Pakistan
The thin summer air above Kohistan finally carried a different news this week: the remains of Nasiruddin, missing since 1997, surfaced from the thinning edge of Lady Meadows glacier and let his children bury the silence they were taught to live with.
The Day That Never Left the Mountain
Nasiruddin, then 31, ran into the towering peaks of northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa three decades ago after a sudden village quarrel.
With his younger brother beside him and no path beyond ice, he slipped into a crevasse that never closed.
The brother survived and returned home carrying nothing but the echo of that plunge.
Endless Quests Across White Silence
- Uncles and cousins trudged the glacier “many times over the rainy summers, even hiring local porters when goats refused to climb,” said nephew Malik Ubaid by telephone.
- The search notebooks collected snowfall as decades turned the glacier shinier yet smaller.
- With every failed expedition, the family lit an extra prayer candle, whispering “God keeps better records than the ice.”
The Shepherd Who Saw the Past
On 31 July 2024, a herdsman chasing stray sheep near the melting snout stumbled upon an upright figure frozen mid-step, trousers still khaki, wallet still holding a faded national ID.
Shock rippled through nearby hamlets within hours; the glacier, retreating under yearly heat, had quietly surrendered its coldest secret.
A Burial in the Same Valley He Fled
The body reached the village wrapped in layers of white linen before Wednesday prayers.
Witnesses say even the embroidered collar of Nasiruddin’s shalwar kameez looked freshly stitched, untouched by three decades of crushing snow.
Family Reactions
“Relief does not mean closure; it means the earth is ready to carry him, and we are ready to speak his name aloud,” said Ubaid, eyes filmed with decades of waiting.
Climate and Memory
Kohistan’s receding ice does not only reveal rocks and rubble; it also uncovers stories written in bone and frost.
As Lady Meadows thins with each hot season, scientists warn similar revelations may multiply across the Himalayas, turning melting sheets into unexpected archives of human loss.
The Vanishing Kingdom of Ice: Passu, Baltistan and 10 Million Others on the Brink
Passu Glacier
From the shoulders of Passu Peak, a 7,500-meter sentinel in the Karakoram, the glacier spills like frozen milk along a granite valley. Seen by trekkers on August 15, 2024, its ivory surface still gleams, but every crevasse tells a quieter story: water is winning the war against ice.
Pakistan Frozen Crown: 13,000 and Counting down
- Global High-latitude Exception: Only the Arctic and Antarctic hold more glacial mass.
- Local Treasure Chest: The 13,000 glaciers feed rivers that sustain 220 million people downstream.
- Warming Alert: Average summer temperatures in the region have climbed 1.4 °C since 1970, accelerating meltwater pulses twice the historic norm.
Cause and Consequence at a Glance
The Driver
Anthropogenic climate change now pumps two extra weeks of above-zero days into the high valleys each year, exposing ice fields that used to live in perpetual chill.
The Price
- Rushing Rivers and Flooded Hamlets: Surge events from unstable lakes threaten roads, bridges and seasonal crops.
- Uneven Discharge Cycles: Late-summer flows may vanish by mid-century, endangering hydroelectric plants from Islamabad to Karachi.
Snapshot from the Heights
Captured by Nurettin Boydak through Anadolu Agency, one frame shows two distant figures trekking along the glacier’s lateral moraine. In 1992 the same vantage point revealed an unbroken blanket of snow; today the ice tongue has retreated more than 600 meters uphill.
You Can Still See It—But Not for Long
Climbers planning on visiting Passu next summer should expect less dazzling white and more gray rock. Guides warn that the easiest approach routes are shifting every season. The mountains remain majestic, yet their once-eternal crown is shrinking faster than anyone imagined.
Bodies exposed by melting glaciers in recent years
Ice Retreat Reveals Lost Lives: How Climate Change Is Returning Long-Missing Climbers
A silent exhumation is underway on the planet’s highest mountains. Rapid glacier retreat is liberating preserved human remains once entombed in perpetual snowfields, reuniting families with loved ones decades after their disappearance and rekindling mysteries from the 1940s to today.
The Return of the American Alpinist—22 Years Later
In July 2024 shepherds guiding trekkers above the Cordillera Blanca stumbled upon the perfectly preserved form of a U.S. climber who vanished in 2002. Local authorities had scoured the same couloirs for weeks back then without success; melting ice had since lowered the surface by nearly 40 metres, lifting the body out of its icy vault. Forensic teams used dental records and an old lift pass still tucked inside a jacket pocket to confirm identity. The family received closure exactly four months shy of what would have been his 50th birthday.
Everest Cleans Up—and Uncovers Five More Souls
June 2024 saw the Nepalese army’s annual mountain-cleaning team wrap its month-long sweep of Everest, Lhotse and Nuptse. Among the 13.4 metric tonnes of trash removed were:
Officials estimate the melting Khumbu Glacier now sheds four human corpses per year, five times the norm recorded during the 1990s.
Alpine Ghosts from the 1980s, 1970s and Even 1942
A routine crevasse survey revealed the remains of a German alpinist who had slipped through a snow bridge in 1986. His antique film camera was intact; rescuers salvaged twenty-three still-exposed frames awaiting development.
French-Italian rescue units uncovered two backpacks and skeletal fragments believed to belong to French hikers last seen in either 1984 or 1991. A faded ski-resort ticket offered the only clue to their identity.
A retreating cirque let go of the body of a British climber missing since the summer of 1971. Police matched his scuffed hobnailed boots to missing-person reports archived in Durham.
A separate discovery that same September exposed a husband and wife entombed since February 1942. The couple had apparently taken a wrong turn at dusk while traversing a goat path above Zermatt. A rusted ration tin confirmed their era.
A Sherpa team on a film project spotted fingers and part of a fleece protruding from the Gangapurna glacier—remnants of a 1999 avalanche that buried renowned Spanish alpinist José Antonio Olivar and his cameraman. Their reels—crucial footage from the last century—are now restored and digitised.
Why the Peaks Are Surrendering Their Past
Glaciologists warn that accelerating melting is compressing decades-long losses into a single generation. Lower snow-fall, longer summers and darker ice surfaces absorb more heat, thinning glaciers at rates exceeding one vertical metre per year on many key routes. Every lost metre exposes crevasses once thought sealed forever, turning them into open-air museums and unsettling repositories of human ambition.
For mountaineering families the thaw is bittersweet—a race between science and entropy to retrieve the fallen before meltwater torrents sweep them away for good.
