Austrian Glacier Returns Mountaineer’s Backpack After Six Decades

A backpack discarded during a mountaineering accident in Austria more than 60 years ago has reappeared from the ice and been returned to its owner. The 86-year-old man left the equipment behind after falling into a crevasse while crossing the Sulztalferner glacier with friends in August 1963. The group was connected by a rope, allowing his companions to pull him out. According to Austrian police, he then removed and threw away the backpack to reduce his weight. A hiker discovered the belongings in July on the glacier, in Tyrol’s Ötztal Alps, at an elevation of about 2,955 metres. The recovered items included an ice axe, a camera, a pipe and other climbing equipment. The pipe and some of the other possessions date from the 1950s or 1960s. Although the documents inside the backpack were heavily damaged and frayed, police were able to determine the owner’s name and locate him. The man was reportedly too ill to travel to collect the belongings, so they were handed to his son for delivery. The discovery is one of a growing number of finds linked to retreating Alpine glaciers. As the ice melts, it has exposed objects, human remains and traces of earlier activity that were preserved beneath the surface. In 2015, a barracks used by Italian troops during the First World War’s White War was found on Mount Scorluzzo, overlooking the Stelvio Pass. The melting ice has also revealed the bodies of dozens of soldiers, some still wearing uniforms, over the past two decades. The best-known discovery came in 1991, when two German hikers found the mummified body of a hunter who died about 5,300 years ago in the Ötztal Alps near the Italian border. Known as Ötzi the Iceman, the remains are displayed at a museum in Bolzano.