Mummified body of missing climber found after 22 years
Twenty-two years ago, William Stampfl and two of his friends went missing when an avalanche buried them as they made their way up one of the highest peaks in the Andes mountains in Peru.
William's family had little hope of finding him alive, or even retrieving his corpse from thick layers of snow, but in June his daughter got an unexpected call.
A stranger said he had come across the climber's frozen, but mostly intact body as he made his own way up the Huascaran peak.
"It's been a shock" Jennifer Stampfl said.
The 53-year-old added: "When you get that phone call that he's been found your heart just sinks. You don't know how exactly to feel at first."
A group of policemen and mountain guides retrieved his body on Tuesday, putting it on a stretcher and slowly taking it down the icy mountain.
His body was found at an altitude of 5200m, around a nine-hour hike from one of the camps where climbers stop when they are climbing the summit.
William's body and clothing were preserved by the ice and freezing temperatures, with the driver's licence in his hip pouch used to identify him.
Lenin Alvardo, one of the police officers who participated in the recovery operation, added that the hip pouch also contained a pair of sunglasses, a camera, a voice recorder and two decomposing $20 bills.
William still had a gold wedding ring on his left hand.
"I've never seen anything like that," Alvarado said.
#Áncash🚨| ¡Rescatan cadáver en glaciar!
Agentes del Departamento de Alta Montaña, tras una intensa búsqueda ubicaron el cuerpo momificado y deshidratado de una persona NN en el nevado de #Huascarán. Sus restos fueron internados a la morgue de #Yungay para su identificación. pic.twitter.com/WJGklwUwbp
— Policía Nacional del Perú (@PoliciaPeru) July 6, 2024
The climber who found his body then called William's relatives, who then got in touch with local mountain guides.
His daughter said that the family plans to move the body to a funeral home in Lima, where it can be cremated.
"For 22 years, we just kind of put in our mind: 'This is the way it is. Dad's part of the mountain, and he's never coming home,'" she said.
William was trying to climb Peru's highest peak with his friends Matthew Richardson and Steve Erskine in 2002.
Erskine's body was found shortly after the avalanche, but Richardson's corpse is still missing.
William's daughter said that a plaque in memory of the three friends was placed at the summit of Mount Baldy in Southern California, where the trio trained for their expeditions.
She hopes to return to the site with her father's remains.
Image: Peruvian National Police/ X