Kankar Pünzum Attempt. Our expedition consisted of Albert Fellinger, Dr. Wolfgang Trost, Gerhard Berger, Toni Ponholzer, Helmut Ortner, Sebastian Ruckensteiner and me as leader. We left Bumtang on July 28 and took ten days, two of them inactively, on the approach. Base Camp and Advance Base were at 5000 and 5400 meters. We tried the same route as the Japanese in 1985 on the south ridge. We placed Camp I at 6300 meters at the foot of the ice dome, a prominent summit in the ice ridge. We continued along the sawtooth ice ridge without gaining altitude to the place where the summit ridge shoots sharply up. There, at 6600 meters, we gave up on August 26. There were only two days out of the 21 we were on the mountain without snowfall. Daily snowfall was up to 50cms. We would have had to traverse off the summit ridge left in many places. The avalanche danger there would have been great.

Sepp Mayerl, Österreichischer Alpenverein