Mont Blanc Patrice Hyvert
A view of the Mont Blanc where the body of climber Patrice Hyvert was found 32 years after he went missing. Reuters

French mountaineers have found the body of a young climber who disappeared more than 30 years ago on the Mont Blanc.

A group of climbers who were ascending the Talefre glacier, on Europe's highest mountain, found a corpse released by the ice melt last week.

Police in the alpine town of Chamonix, in the Haute-Savoie province, identified the dead man as Patrice Hyvert, a 23-year-old mountaineer who went missing on the mountain in 1982.

Early in march that year, Hyvert, an aspiring mountain guide, left his home in the renowned tourist destination to attempt a difficult solo climb of the 4,122-meter-high Nant Blanc glacier on the French side of the Mont Blanc massif.

He planned to ski back down but never returned. Hours after the Chamonix native had started his ascent the weather suddenly turned bad and he remained stranded in a heavy snowfall.

His parents alerted rescue services but weather conditions were so severe that search helicopters had to wait two days before it was possible for them to fly over the area.

They managed to rescue another mountaineer, the world famous daredevil alpinist Jean-Marc Boivin, who had set off for solo climb on another side of the mountain that same day as Hyvert. There was no trace of the latter.

Hyvert's father told le Dauphiné Libéré newspaper that Boivin later told him that during the storm "the situation up there was really bad".

Hyvert's body remained concealed by the ice up until today; he was found at 2687 meters of altitude (8815 feet) near the Couvercle mountain shelter.

France