Ghost of the Mountains

I have just got back from Mongolia, and this will be the first of several posts. But the biggest hope was to see a Snow Leopard, Panthera uncia, and we did, and so I’m going to start with the day it happened. In later posts if you are interested you can read more about the prior four days of searching, and many other Mongolian delights.

We were in the Altai, in the west of Mongolia. Snow leopards live in these mountains, which rise to nearly 4000m. But it was cold, and our hosts told us the leopard’s prey had moved lower and so had the leopards, and they doubted we would see one. Discouraging. On day four, we went round to a new side of the Jargalant Mt range, and drove up the valley. Here is the ‘road’, and a shot of the glorious scenery:

We paused for a rest, looking out across the distant valley at some tiny dots that were Argali sheep. In front of us was an oboo, a stone cairn surrounded by a stone circle that marks the ancestors and their bonds with nature, lined up precisely with a gap in the hillside.

We drove higher:

and stopped for lunch, at about 2600m. The snowline was around 3300m. The scouts on their dirt bikes arrived to join us.

At the bottom of the valley in the photo below is a tiny dot, in the centre of the photo. That is a dirt bike, so you can absorb the scale of this landscape. .

We settled down,

Istvan our guide scanning the hillsides:

No sign of a leopard, just some distant yaks and an ibex.

This was our last day in the mountains, and at 1.30pm we started to get into the vehicles, when there was radio crackle, and excited chatter in Mongolian from our guides. Unbelievably the scouts (who had finished lunch and gone back to search) had seen a leopard. We hiked across a steep hillside for about 10 minutes, and looked down into another valley. One scout materialized, and looked through the scope.

The leopard is here, 800m or 1/2 a mile away across the valley:

Look closer:

My camera is not up to BBC David Attenborough standards, so my photo is unimpressive, but it is indeed a snow leopard, asleep on a ledge, 1/2 mile away:

Only the tail gives it away. There was a dead ibex nearby, so it had eaten and was now guarding its prey and taking a nap. It may stay with its prey for a week, and kill every 10-15 days. How the scout had seen it was beyond us. He said it had slightly shifted to get more comfortable, and the movement had given it away. What skill, and what eyesight.

Had we left 30 minutes earlier we would never have seen a snow leopard. There is something about knowing that you have brushed up against the world of such a mythical beast that fills your heart with joy. Sometimes the stars align.

PS Mongolia probably has a population of around 1000 snow leopards spread across around 100,000 square kilometers. Each solitary animal can range over around 500Km2.

https://globalsnowleopard.org/paws-preliminary-estimates-of-mongolias-snow-leopard-population-released

There are around 4000-6500 worldwide. The IUCN classifies them as Vulnerable, and no longer as Endangered (which indicates less than 2500 left worldwide), but this is controversial. Much of their isolated habitat is not explored. If you are interested, a very good summary of their behavior and status can be found here:

The Snow Leopard