A camera that spent nearly three years in Glacier National Park’s Avalanche Creek will be returned to its owners in Nebraska. While the camera was destroyed by the water and ice, the card inside the camera still had all the pictures on it completely intact.

Hungry Horse News photographer Chris Peterson found the camera late last month and, thinking it was garbage, stuck it in his pocket to throw it in the trash.

But a few days later, he decided to pry the destroyed camera open to see if it had a card inside. The card was caked in mud, but when he cleaned it off a little and put it in the card reader at his home computer, it worked.

By searching through the photos, he determined the woman who owned the card likely lived in Lincoln, Neb., so Peterson contacted the Lincoln Journal Star, and they ran a story about the camera on their front page.

Caroline Rezac, the owner of the camera, contacted Peterson on Sunday. She said the camera fell out of her husband’s shirt pocket into the creek. She was happy to have the camera back, as it had some cherished family photos.