WELLINGTON: A New Zealand hiker’s body that lay frozen in a glacier for more than four decades has been formally identified, police said on Thursday.

David Erik Moen, 19, was caught in an avalanche in September 1973 on the South Island’s remote Tasman glacier, they said, after searchers at the time failed to locate his body.

Human remains were found in the area in January this year and taken for DNA testing.

Police said the tests showed the body, which media reports described as “well preserved” when discovered after almost 42 years in the frozen wilderness, was Moen.

His parents have both reportedly died, the father just months before the remains were found, but surviving family members issued a statement expressing gratitude to the police.

“We cannot put into words what it feels like to have David returned to us after all this time but we are taken back to when he first went missing back in 1973,” it said.

“David’s spirit still remains in the beautiful, peaceful environment which claimed the life of a wonderful and dearly loved young man in the prime of his life”.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2015

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