An 86-year-old climber in Austria has been reunited with his backpack and climbing equipment, more than 60 years after losing them in a glacier crevasse.

The items were discovered in July on the Sulztalferner Glacier in Tyrol, at an altitude of around 2,955 metres. They included a climbing axe, a camera and a pipe, believed to date from the 1950s or 1960s. The discovery was made by another climber, who alerted the authorities. Austrian police launched an investigation and, despite the poor condition of the documents inside the bag, were able to identify the owner.

The story dates back to August 1963, when the man fell into a crevasse while hiking with his friends. The group was roped together and the friends managed to pull him out safely. To lighten his load during the ordeal, the climber removed his backpack and threw it into the crevasse. There it remained covered in ice for more than six decades.

Now 86, the man is too ill to personally retrieve the finds, so authorities have handed them over to his son. The rapid melting of glaciers in Europe, which scientists attribute largely to global warming caused by human activity, has brought to the surface objects and remains that have been preserved for decades or even thousands of years.

In 2015, a barracks where Italian soldiers had taken shelter during battles with the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I was discovered on Mount Scorluzzo in Italy. Over the past two decades, dozens of other bodies have been recovered from the ice, some still in their period uniforms. One of the most famous discoveries came in 1991, when two German climbers found the mummified body of a hunter believed to have lived about 5,300 years ago in the Ötztal Alps.

The 86-year-old climber's bag is yet another testament to how melting glaciers are bringing back to the surface stories that had remained hidden under the ice for decades.