Whether he was traveling alone or had become separated from companions is unknown.

The high alpine terrain that he was crossing when he died is not a place where any experienced traveler would have chosen to be in bad conditions, which suggests either that he was caught by a sudden change in weather or that circumstances forced him into the terrain rather than allowing him to choose it freely.

The ice took him.

And for the next several hundred years, it kept him, until the warming of the late twentieth century began the slow process of his return.