Snow leopard sighting!

Only ~500 Westerners have seen a snow leopard in the wild, according to experts at Snow Leopard Trails. By way of comparison, that’s roughly the number of Westerners who see a tiger each day in India. Two friends and I recently added ourselves to the snow leopard list.

Ladakh in northern India boasts the highest airport in the world—more than 11,000 feet—and is the jumping off point for a concentrated snow leopard population. However, setting the expectation to see a snow leopard can be a recipe for disappointment. It’s called the “grey ghost” for a reason. It often disappears over a ridge the moment it’s seen. Getting even a glimpse is often a pipe dream. One group had just finished 19 days of intensive searching in Ladakh. They saw nothing. Jon, a man on our trip had been searching for a snow leopard for almost a decade. He had gone to Mongolia three times, Bhutan twice, Nepal twice, and had hired a hunter-tracker to find the animal two months before he arrived in Kyrgyzstan. No sightings.

A view from my plane seat on our way from Delhi to Ladakh. 

Like finding a needle in a haystack. Make that 100 haystacks. The snow leopard's spotted fur pattern blends in perfectly with the rocky landscape.

My friend, searching for the leopard from a lookout spot.

We used the spotting scope to scan hillsides.

The blue sheep on top of this rock better watch out! A snow leopard could be stalking it.

On the first full day of our week-long search, we rose at 6:00 am. We hiked to a lookout spot and began scanning the rocky landscape for any signs of movement, usually from blue sheep, which are the snow leopard’s primary diet. Suddenly, one of our guides spotted two thick tails wagging in the distance. It was a rare mating pair. But the grey ghosts disappeared before anyone else could see them. We immediately began sprinting towards where they had been, eventually identifying their footprints and scurrying up mountainside after mountainside in hot pursuit. We followed the prints for almost 5 hours over some of the most difficult, steep, and (frankly) scary terrain I’ve ever attempted. By 1 pm, I was so hungry and exhausted that I was “making mistakes,” such as losing my footing or placing a hiking pole on an unsecured rock. We had to turn back. I remember being excited by the pursuit but disappointed by how close we had come.

The mountain we climbed on the first morning of our search. We started on the left side of this image and made it to the distant peak in the upper right corner. The terrain was frightening.

Snow leopard tracks!  

The rocks are so dangerously sharp here that even the snow leopards cut their feet. Check out the blood on this footprint (upper right).

In the middle of our much-needed lunch, I heard the sighting call—“Aaaoooo, aaaoooo!”—echoing down the valley. The sound is distinctive. It is yelled by a searcher only if a snow leopard is sighted. Not missing a beat, I threw my plate on the ground and joined the exodus of all 10 searchers and our guides running towards the origins of the call. I can only imagine that excitement that Jon must have felt on that run. A decade-long search was coming to fruition.

Given the strenuousness of my morning (not to mention our ~13,000-foot elevation), the approximately mile-long trek to the site seemed like an eternity. Winded, I fell behind the pack. By the time I arrived, a small group of people was cheering, poised in front of our spotting scopes. The view was breathtaking. A large adult male, approximately 800 meters away, was moving up the nearby ridgeline, stealthily following a pack of blue sheep. Though the 60x-magnification spotting scope, we could see the its foggy hot breath and thick bushy tail. The sighting lasted for almost an hour before the animal ambled over the crest of the mountain at sunset.

Our group eyeing the leopard.

Can you spot the grey ghost in the center of this photo? If not, see a zoomed-in version in the next image.

There it is!

I was super hopeful that we'd see a snow leopard (and know that I often am lucky!), but never did I think we'd actually spot one. Such a peak life experience—and one of the rarest wildlife sightings in the world. YAY! A friend (she is in the picture below) wrote an amazing account of our snow leopard trip. Check it out here.

Taken just after the sighting. (I grew the beard to help keep warm. It was near 0°F every night, and we slept in thin plastic tents. Wowzers, it was cold.)