The Cashmere Wearing Corpse Found Atop Mexico’s Highest Mountain

Pico de Orizaba is the highest mountain in Mexico. It still has glaciers. It has an elevation of 18,491 feet.

I just learned of this story today while watching a Curious World youtube video entitled When Nature Unearths the Dead II. I was surprised that nothing about this tale appeared in this sub.

It’s an interesting mystery, but the information about it seems very ambiguous and sometimes contradictory. Google doesn’t really produce much on it.

Synopsis

The mummified body of a man was found on the northern slope of the mountain in June of 2015. He was found at an altitude of 16,900 feet.

The clothing of the man was very unusual for such a high altitude: he was wearing only a black cashmere suit and a white shirt. He had no shoes.

This led investigators to believe that the man either (1) was a very inexperienced hiker or (2) had fallen from an airplane that crashed in 1999.

He was determined to have been 50 years of age when he died and had been dead for 15 years. It was also likely that he had bled to death.

From what I can Google, he has not yet been identified.

Some months prior to this, two mummified bodies had also been discovered on the same mountain but on the opposite side. These were likely casualties of a 1959 expedition in which three climbers were killed in an avalanche.

From what I’ve read, these two corpses have yet to be identified (although a survivor of the 1959 expedition thinks these are two of his companions).

Ambiguities and Contradictions

My synopsis is based largely on the When Nature Unearths the Dead II video. However, the articles I have linked below contain ambiguous and contradictory narratives.

How old was the man? The video and The Costa Rica Star article (linked below) both say the man was 50. But the mummipedia page, Inquisitr article, and BBC article (linked below) all say he was about 25.

What was he wearing? The video says he was “wearing nothing more than a black cashmere suit and a blue shirt.” Mummipedia says he was “wearing a white shirt, pants, a grey sweater and his shoes were not found.” There seem to be minor but noticeable differences between the accounts of the man’s clothing.

Did he have any equipment? The Express article (linked below) says the man was “carrying climbing equipment” but no climbing equipment was mentioned in the video or any of the other articles.

What’s with the “plane crash”? Although the video posits that he may have been a “victim of a plane crash which happened back in 1999” there are no details on this crash. The articles are even more ambiguous about this, saying only a crash that occurred in the 1990s.

Questions