PICO DE ORIZABA, Mexico, March 7 (UPI) -- Two frozen, mummified bodies were recently discovered by climbers on Mexico's Pico de Orizaba. 
 
 The climbers were on their way to the top of Pico de Orizaba, the country's tallest mountain, when they saw a head and hand sticking out of the snow. They then noticed another corpse a few hundred feet away. 
 
 Experts are speculating the bodies may belong to people who were lost in an avalanche on the mountain over 50 years ago. An attempt was made to recover the bodies on Friday. 
 
 Two families have come forward to claim the bodies, assuming they belong to the people they are thought to belong to. Forensic experts plan to identify the bodies using pieces of clothing that remain intact. 
 
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 Two mummified bodies found of climbers who disappeared on Mexico's highest peak 55 years ago 
 
 A team of Mexican climbers searching for a frozen body on the country's highest mountain stumbled onto a second mummified cadaver during their expedition on Thursday. 
 
 The 12 local civil protection mountaineers had embarked on their mission after climbers reported seeing a frozen skull 1,000ft from the peak of the 18,000ft Pico de Orizaba on Monday. 
 
 The second body was found 400ft away, and it was also frozen and mummified, said Juan Navarro, mayor of the town of Chalchicomula de Sesma, near the mountain in central Puebla state. 
 
 "It was impossible to conduct the rescue this time. Fog prevented the work," Navarro told AFP, adding that only two of the climbers were able to reach the location of the bodies. 
 
 After the first body was spotted, Mexican authorities received phone calls from people in Spain and Germany who believe it could be a relative, he said said. 
 
 But local officials suspect that the cadavers correspond to two of three Mexicans who went missing after an avalanche 55 years ago. 
 
 Pieces of clothing found on both bodies could help identify them, Navarro said. 
 
 The recovery effort will resume Friday with the help of a helicopter. 
 
 The bodies will be taken to the Puebla state prosecutor's office to undergo DNA identification tests. 
 
 The mountain, also known as the Citlaltepetl volcano, is popular among climbers, though some have got lost or suffered fatal accidents in the past. 

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 The remains of a mummified mountaineer were found at the Pico de Orizaba volcano in the state of Puebla, in Central Mexico. 
 
 The Pico de Orizaba, is a stratovolcano, the highest mountain in Mexico and the third highest in North America, after Mount McKinley of the United States, and Mount Logan of Canada. It rises 5,636 metres (18,491 ft) above sea level in the eastern end of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, on the border between the states of Veracruz and Puebla. 
 
 The volcano is currently dormant but not extinct with the last eruption taking place during the 19th century. It is the second most prominent volcanic peak in the world after Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro. 
 
 The human remains may be older than 50 years, according to government sources and were found at 4,300 meters (2.6 miles) above sea level. 
 
 Juan Navarro, mayor of Chalchicomula, said that the remains will be retrieved from the mountain by a ministerial agent accompanied by Civil Protection personnel and a group of climbers from Ciudad Serdán. 
 
 Hilario Aguilar, president of the Mexican Alpine Club in Chalchicomula de Sesma, said that the remains were accidentally found by a climber who saw a skull and a hand when he was trying to stop his fall. 
 
 He added that 50 years ago climbers from Mexico City had an accident and that one of them was never found. 
 
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– A team of climbers trekked some 17,000 feet up Mexico's Pico de Orizaba in search of one set of frozen, mummified remains only to stumble upon a second set some 400 feet away, reports the Telegraph. "It was impossible to conduct the rescue this time," says a local official; rescuers were to try again to pull the bodies off the dormant volcano, which the Yucatan Times notes is the third-tallest peak in North America at 18,491 feet above sea level. Officials aren't exactly sure who the corpses might be, notes UPI, but they're speculating that they may belong to two of three people killed in an avalanche more than 50 years ago, and that a third corpse may be nearby. Officials hope to identify the bodies through still-intact clothing on them and DNA. (A mummified monk was recently found inside a Buddha statue.)