Duncan MacPherson was 23 and had a place in hockey history: the New York Islanders selected him in the first round of the 1984 NHL draft. In August 1989, he traveled alone to Europe to visit old friends before continuing on to Scotland, where he was due to arrive on August 12.
On August 9, he rented a snowboard at the Stubai Glacier in the Austrian Alps. A resort employee saw him leave alone, perhaps to make the most of one last bit of snow before nightfall. He never returned. Six weeks later, the car he had borrowed from a friend was still in the parking lot. Searches turned up nothing.
In July 2003, a resort employee spotted a glove sticking out of the ice on the Schaufelferner Glacier, right on a ski run. It was MacPherson. The melting glacier had given him back almost 14 years later. According to his family’s website, his forearms and hands had been amputated and his left leg severed—injuries that point to a snow groomer. His death remains officially unresolved.
