In 1937, legendary explorer, photographer and cartographer Bradford Washburn was forced to give up tens of kilograms of cameras, surveying equipment and supplies when encountering bad weather while climbing Mount Lucania. in the Saint Eliaskham Mountains, in the frozen Yukon region of Canada.

85 years later, a team of professional mountain scientists and explorers have discovered this long-lost piece of "historic gear" buried in ice on a distant glacier.

It all started in late April, when professional snowboarder Griffin Post embarked on a three-week expedition up the glacier with other explorers and scientists, to search for the locations of cameras that had once been on the glacier. being left. The area is now within Canada’s Kluane National Park and Reserve.

"I was hopeful, but I knew it was like finding a needle in a haystack," Post said in a press release. "A lot can happen over the course of 85 years on a glacier."

The team was trying to find the device left behind by Bradford Washburn from a 1937 expedition in the Sant Elias Mountains in Canada.

Dora Medrzycka, a University of Ottawa glaciologist, was called in to as‌sist, traveling to the site and mapping the glacier’s limits to determine where the instrument may have moved over time. .

"Basically, they need help figuring out how the glacier is moving and how best to find buried equipment," Medrzycka said. A team of glaciologists at the University of Ottawa also joined in to support the remote expedition.

Upon reaching the area, the team searched on foot, skiing, and snowboarding. “We had an idea of where to start looking, but nothing was very precise,” Medrzycka added. “We walked up and down the glacier area for many kilometers. We had trouble finding it, we couldn’t see it anywhere."

To try and understand the original location of where the devices were left, the team looked at photographs that had survived the Washburn expedition. But the result is not very good.

“We almost gave up because all our efforts yielded nothing,” says Medrzycka.

The team looked at photographs left over from Bradford Washburn’s expedition to find the location of the lost cameras.

On the penultimate day of a short trip in August, Medrzycka came up with a new theory about where the artifacts might have existed. Glaciers usually move at a constant rate from year to year, but the Walsh Glacier is a rare "surge-variable" glacier, which means it moves faster in the following year or two. every few decades.

She noticed piles of debris appearing along the length of the glacier, which the scientist believes was caused by rising water. That made her rethink how and when glaciers moved in the past. The observations allowed her to calculate to give a new estimate of the possible locations of the items, which are more than 5 or 7 kilometers down the valley and about 22 kilometers from where Washburn had left them.

Her hunch eventually led the team to the discovery of the group of buried equipment.

"It’s a great feeling and I’m relieved that I didn’t fail the search ," Medrzycka said. "It was a great moment for everyone."

The remains of Bradford Washburn’s Fairchild F-8 camera were among the items found.

Weeks later, archaeologists from the National Parks Service of Canada returned to the glacier with an expedition team to recover equipment beneath the ice. The team found "a substantial remains" of Washburn’s Fairchild F-8 camera, with two other portable cameras with film reels still inside, walking aids lengths, tents and other survival equipment.

According to Medrzycka, the team knew Washburn had filmed the landscape before he gave up his equipment. So now, they are planning to restore the decades-old film, hoping to save the rare images.

The team also obtained two other cameras, including a DeVry "Lunchbox", with film still inside.

"What’s really important here is that they’re new data that we have no way of getting without finding those buried devices," Medrzycka said. "We’ve been able to trace the journey back since 1937."

She said the discovery could help scientists better understand how glaciers move, adding: "If we combine this information with satellite data, we can try find out how the flow of the Walsh Glacier has changed over the past eight decades."