Melting Austrian glacier returns backpack to mountaineer 63 years after crevasse rescue

An 86-year-old mountaineer has been reunited with his backpack, ice axe, camera, and pipe after a hiker found them on Austria's Sulztalferner glacier in July 2026. He discarded the pack during a 1963 crevasse rescue to lighten his weight. Police traced him through frayed documents inside. Too ill to collect them, he received them via his son. The find adds to a growing list of artifacts surfacing as Alpine glaciers retreat.