Mountaineer Reunited with Backpack Lost 60 Years Ago on Austrian Glacier

An 86-year-old mountaineer has been reunited with his backpack and climbing gear, which emerged from a melting glacier in Austria more than six decades after he was forced to leave them behind. The discovery includes items like an ice axe, a camera, and a pipe, all dating from the 1950s or 1960s.

The equipment was found on the Sulztalferner glacier in Austria's Tyrol region by a hiker in July. Austrian police investigated and, using heavily frayed documents from the backpack, identified the owner and tracked him down. The man had fallen into a crevasse while crossing the glacier with friends in August 1963. To reduce his weight and be pulled free by his companions, he had removed his backpack and thrown it into the crevasse.

While the man's identity remains private, police confirmed he was too ill to collect the items himself and they were returned to him via his son. This incident underscores a growing trend: the accelerating retreat of European glaciers, primarily driven by human-caused global heating, is revealing a significant number of relics, ancient ecosystems, and human remains.

Recent years have seen numerous such discoveries. In 2015, a World War I barracks used by Italian troops was found on Mount Scorluzzo. The melting ice has also yielded the bodies of dozens of soldiers in their uniforms over the past two decades. Perhaps the most famous discovery was "Ötzi the Iceman," a 5,300-year-old mummified hunter found in the Ötztal Alps in 1991, who is now displayed in a museum in Bolzano.