Two first ascents during one expedition

In autumn of 2002 I went on a 4 man expedtion to the eastern part of Nepal close to Kangschenjunga the worlds third highest mountain. But we were not aiming for 8000 meter this time. Instead we had permission for a complete area northwest of the campsite Lhonak. This area has only been visited by climbers a few times and very few of the mountains have been climbed.

In this area we found some very interesting peaks that definitely did not look like a walk in the park. The first challenge we met was not how we climbed the peaks but how we got close to them. After several attempts to find a route into our first priority, the 6800+ meter high Pandra, we succeded. After a sharp turn in the glaciated valley we were ascending we stood in front of a massive wall with only one minor weakness, a long steep ice corridor going from bottom to top. But we still didn't know if that would lead to the upper very steep part of Pandra.

But the next morning when we arrived at the top of the wall in perfect weather shortly after sunrise, we were met by steep ice walls intersected by even steeper rock walls. But now the summit had disappeared out of sight. Efter some hours further climbing, providing everything from dry tooling over rock walls to svimming through completely unconsolidated snow, we came to a small plateau and were happy to see a small fairly easy ice face leading directly to the summit. An in less than an hour we had climbed our first Himalayan virgin mountain. What a marvellous feeling!

The expedition was about a week later successfull in putting 3 climbers on the summit of another virgin peak, the approximately 6500 meter high Danga. For me it was a great experience to be capable of doing first ascents of difficult Himalayan peaks and the feeling of penetrating into areas where there was no tracks, no cairns, no trace of previous human entry at all was extraordinary.

On the upper slopes of Pandra at approximately 6400 meter	Arriving at the summit of Danga, 6500 meter, with Kangchenjunga in the backgound