Bryan Hylenski has come closer than anyone to the summit of Janhukot in the Himalayas, but he still hasn’t made it.

He’s hoping this will be his year.

Coming within just 300 meters of the 6,850-meter peak in 2010, Hylenski was forced to head back down. A second attempt on a more difficult route the next year was also abandoned.

But coming so close has confirmed to Hylenski that success is possible, and he is planning a third and hopefully final attempt to conquer the summit.

“It’s one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been. It keeps drawing me back every year,” he said.

Found on the Gangotri glacier, which melts to form the start of the Ganges, the climb is a special one as Hylenski describes it. The first 10 km of the hike is alongside pilgrims heading to the source of the spiritual river. After that it is more than 50 km with not a soul in sight.

Hylenski’s first attempt was with two women and an Indian man. The man, who had suggested the attempt on the unconquered peak, fell ill early on. A cist burst in his lung and he was taken down the mountain by a Sherpa, just hours away from dying.

The group finally had to turn back because they did not have the time to negotiate the final route to the summit.

A second attempt in 2011 proved near fatal for two members. Early on a team member suffered a ruptured duodenum (a part of the small intestine) and had to be rescued, and later Hylenski was almost hit by a “refrigerator-sized” rock while attempting a final push for the summit.

Undaunted, Hylenski has formed a new group to finally crack the mountain this year, with Jake Preston, Dan Kopperud, Gabe Thomas and Jonn Jeanneret, who know each other from climbing in Korea.

Hylenski said that the team had been limited this time to skilled climbers with a lot of experience, rather than allowing less experienced friends to join them. They have also been training regularly for the last 18 months on everything from fitness to ice climbing.

“It was our belief that some of the injuries that have happened were because of a lack of proper training,” he explained.

All members of the team work in education in Korea except Jeanneret, who is with the U.S. military, and has been reposted to Okinawa, but helped with promotions and activities for Korea on the Rocks Initiatives (KOTRi), a company run by Hylenski that helps restore and maintain climbing routes in Korea.

Jeanneret will be filming a documentary of the summit attempt.

Hylenski has been the first to climb new routes up several mountains, but has never yet been the first to make it to a summit.

While he concedes that the draw for sponsors is the trailblazing aspect, Hylenski sees the main attraction as something different.

“I don’t really have any interest in any of the 8,000-meter peaks,” he said.

“They have got loads of people on them and these remote peaks allow for a lot more of the experience that I think a lot of people head into the mountains for, which is to challenge yourself as well as to be somewhere remote where you can control your own destiny, your own survival and you are not affected by others, except the people you choose to be with.”

An Indian government official has to join the group by law. Hylenski says he has now become friends with the man they have asked to join them, who will take the total to six people.

The group plans to split and take two routes ― the one attempted in 2010 and a new one developed based on their own experiences, video and photo images and descriptions by others who have attempted the route.

“The main reason people have not been able to do this mountain is a combination of weather and sheer dangers around the mountain. …There’s really no clear-cut way up the mountain that anyone has been able to find yet,” said Hylenski.

“Every time someone gets close there’s a massive hole or a massive crevasse or something in the way. But we’ve been able to identify with all those reports two possible routes that are new and the way that we found in 2010.”

The group is being supplied sponsorship and gear by Mammut Korea, but they hope that the documentary they are filming will also help recoup some of the cost.

A documentary team from a cable TV station is covering them and the group will license the footage from the attempt to get some funds back, and in the long run they hope to license the film at international climbing film tours.

They also plan to show it this year at the film tour KOTRi runs in Korea.

Although the documentary has helped them attract sponsorship, it needs funding in itself, for which they have set up a Kickstarter project. To see the project, where you can find out more about the attempt, visit “Janhukot - Climbing an Unclimbed Mountain” at www.kickstarter.com.

By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)