Retreating Austrian glacier returns lost gear to mountaineer 63 years later

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 dropped the pack during a 1963 crevasse rescue to lighten his load. Police traced him through frayed documents inside. Too ill to collect the items, he received them via his son. The find joins a growing list of artifacts surfacing as Alpine glaciers retreat.