Body of San Bernardino Climber Missing for Two Decades Recovered in Peru
Twenty-two years ago, Bill Stampfl, a mountaineer from Chino, California, was buried in an avalanche as he ascended Huascaran, a 22,000-foot peak in Peru. In June of this year, his family received a call from a climber who’d discovered Stampfl’s frozen body on the mountain, according to the San Bernardino Sun.
On July 5, Peruvian authorities and mountain rescue teams retrieved the body of William Stampfl, according to a police statement. The remains were found near a camp on Mount Huascaran, at an elevation of approximately 17,060 feet.
Police reported that the freezing temperatures and ice had remarkably preserved Stampfl’s body, clothing, climbing boots, and crampons, according to USA Today. They could identify him because the ice also preserved his belongings, including his driver’s license and passport.
A group of policemen and mountain guides carried Stampfl’s body on a stretcher, wrapped in an orange tarp, down the icy slopes. The location was around a nine-hour hike from a camp used by climbers aiming for Huascaran’s summit.
Stampfl, 58, was climbing Mount Huascaran with his friends Steve Erskine and Matthew Richardson in June 2002 when they were caught in an avalanche. Only Erskine’s body was recovered shortly after the incident. The three trained for the climb by trekking up and down Mt. Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains, according to an LA Times story at the time.
“When Bill stood at the top of a mountain, he used to tell me that that was when he felt closest to God.”
Edson Ramirez, a ranger and risk assessor for Huascaran National Park, stated that the glaciers in the region have been shrinking for about the past decade. “Things buried long ago are now reemerging,” Ramirez told Reuters.
A report from Peru’s National Institute of Research of Mountain Glaciers and Ecosystems, released last November, highlighted that the country, which holds about 68% of the world’s tropical glaciers, has seen more than half of its glacier surface disappear over the past sixty years due to climate change. The Cordillera Blanca, part of the Andes and home to Mount Huascaran, is particularly affected, drawing thousands of climbers annually.
Stampfl’s discovery marks the second mummified body found in the Peruvian Andes, according to The Independent. In 2023, the remains of 20-year-old Marta Emilia Altamirano were located on an Andean peak after she died during a 1981 expedition.
