Mountaineers in Chile have solved a mystery that’s lingered for more than five decades.  The found the wreckage of a plane that crashed in the high Andes, killing 24 people, including eight members of a professional soccer team.

It was on 3 April 1961 that LAN Chile Flight 210 was carrying members of the now-defunct top-division Chilean team Green Cross from an away match in Osorno back to Santiago.  The team and staff where on two flights – one plane returned, one was never heard from again.  Searchers spent weeks looking for the ill-fated Douglas DC-3, but they found nothing.  Families held funerals without remains.  Green Cross was dissolved in 1985.

Fast forward to the present, when the climbers came across the wreckage at an altitude of about 3,200 meters on a peak about 360 kilometers south of Santiago.  It was not in the area where investigators had earlier assumed it crashed.  The mountaineers are keeping the exact location out of the media to prevent adventurers or looting. 

“It was a breathtaking moment and we felt all kinds of sensations.  One could feel the energy of the place and breathe the pain,” Expedition member Leonardo Albornoz said of the site.  He adds that the climbers could see a good deal of the fuselage, as well as scattered airplane parts and bones.