Seventy-five years ago, a married couple went walking in the Swiss Alps and never came back. What became of them was a mystery—until recently, when their bodies were discovered in a glacier.

Glaciers form when winter snow does not melt in summer. Some of it lasts till next winter’s snow, which covers and compresses it.

More years of snow add more weight, which eventually compacts the layers into ice.

Glaciers that continue to add snow and weight eventually become heavy enough to move downhill. They bend, flow, and can even fold on themselves, and that movement could have destroyed our Swiss couple’s bodies.

But it didn’t. This glacier was very stable, not moving much, the amount of winter snow balanced with the amount of summer melt.

Instead, in the cold, very dry environment, the bodies essentially freeze-dried, preserving them there through the decades.

Until now: 2014, ’15, and ‘16 were warmer years and glaciers in the region have begun to shrink.

A patrol crossing the area, on one of their regular paths, found the remains of the couple melting out of the ice.

Their children, now in their 70s and 80s with children and grandchildren of their own, breathed a sigh of relief: they could finally lay their parents to rest in the town cemetery.

They chose to wear white to the funeral, rather than black, to symbolize the hope they always held out, to one day reclaim them from the mountains.