PHOTOS: Camera Left in Yukon by Famed Explorer Spotted After 85 Years

Amy Furr

Two famed mountaineers were exploring Canada’s icy Yukon region in 1937 when they had to quickly leave their gear behind.

However, the gear Bradford Washburn and Robert Bates abandoned has since been found, 85 years later, and the discovery included Washburn’s camera, CBS News reported Thursday.

Professional explorer Griffin Post initially learned about the cache while reading the book Escape from Lucania. The title notes the location where the mountaineers may have dropped the items while exploring the Kluane National Park and Reserve.

Images showed the gear that appeared rusty and discolored due to exposure to the elements:

According to Post, Washburn and Bates left the gear because their pilot was unable to pick them up. The pair wanted to return the following year, but those plans never came to fruition.

Post wanted to locate the cache, so he and his teammates went to the Walsh Glacier. Post, along with other researchers, mapped the area and the expedition became almost like a treasure hunt.

For seven days, the group searched on foot, skis, and snowboards, according to Post. When the morning of the seventh day dawned, something incredible happened.

“It took every minute basically, and in the end, the helicopter was about to take off to come pick us back up, and that was when we found the cache,” he recalled.

The group located part of Washburn’s aerial camera and two others with film inside them.

According to Post, they will be examined and researchers hoped to find something salvageable.

“Henry Bradford Washburn Jr. was born on June 7, 1910, in Cambridge, Mass. After climbing Mt. Washington at the age of 11, his mother gave him his first camera, a Kodak Brownie, the point-and-shoot of the day,” according to the American Mountaineering Museum’s website.

“He remained passionate about climbing and photography for the rest of his life,” the museum’s site read, adding he continued “pioneering cartographic methods on Mt. Everest while in his 80s.”

According to the CBS report, researchers estimated the camera had moved approximately 12 miles over such a long period of time.

Following the team’s discovery, Post acknowledged the historical significance and also the incredible science involved.

“Because we essentially backfilled three decades of data the science community didn’t have as far as how glaciers moved,” he commented.

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