Snow Leopard: Stories from the Roof of the World

11. Happy Days

— 89 — 012 As a kid growing up in Novokuznetsk, Siberia, whenever I got sick my mother would tell me that if I concentrated on the happy days of my life, good health would return more quickly. As an adult, I enjoy good health most of the time, but when I do get sick I fall back on my mother’s remedy of long ago. If I were to get sick today, my thoughts would turn to two remarkably happy days in the Tien Shan Mountains of Kirgizia. Just thinking about those days as I write this brings a smile to my face and lightens my heart. Each winter for more than a decade I would take a field expedition into the heart of this range, which lies north and west of the Taklamakan Desert and borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region. As a scientist with the Academy of Science of Kirgizia, my job was to monitor the “key area”—about 1,000 square miles of the central Tien Shan, a unique region that represents the three distinct biogeographical zones of the entire range and exemplifies the diverse habitat of the charismatic snow leopard (irbis in Mongolian and Russian). Happy Days E v g E n i y P . K a s h K a r o v Kyrgyzstan—The author recounts incredible up-close encounters with two snow leopards that become a salubrious memory. E v g E n i y P. K a s h K a r o v — 90 — The northern key area resembles Siberia—marginal snow leopard habitat. The middle key area is habitat for bighorn sheep such as argali and looks similar to the Eastern Pamir Plateau and the Tibetan Plateau—poor snow leopard habitat. Finally, the inner key area—especially the Sarychat-Irtash-Uchkul River basin, with abundant grazing for wintering domestic livestock and habitat for ibex and mountain sheep—constitutes good snow leopard habitat. From our surveys, we found that densities of snow leopard and its prey were higher here than in any other region of the Tien Shan. There was no easy way to get to my study area in the central Tien Shan. My choices were to ski four to five days, crossing a 13,700-foot pass; or to take two to three days riding with geologists who worked a gold mine, camping in small villages, then skiing the last 18½ miles. Everything I needed to sustain me in the field had to be carried in on my backpack, which never weighed less than about 80 pounds. A second route ran through less mountainous relief, something between tundra and steppe, allowing me to use a sledge for the final part of the trip. Early in the project, I had to build a small cabin for shelter against the snow and as a base camp for longer sojourns farther into the mountains. The cabin made it possible to work in the winter, when temperatures bottomed at minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit. I spent forty-two days taking apart a dilapidated old herder’s house and reconstructing a new shelter at a sunnier location about 1,600 feet away. I arranged the windows so I could easily scan the nearby river terraces and ridges. Basic comforts included a long table, two plank beds, and a cast-iron stove. Though the shelter could accommodate four, most of the time it was just me. The first happy day: in December 1986 my good friend and colleague Victor Mishenin and I conducted a wildlife survey along the Koilyu River. The river forked; Victor took the north fork, I took the south. As night closed, I headed back to camp a few miles downriver. Nearing the camp, I could make out my footprints left earlier in the day, but intercrossed with my tracks were those of three snow leopards. They tracked back and forth from one slope to the other. Raising my head from the tracks, I spotted an adult H a p p y D a y s — 91 — male and female lying on a big flat stone not more than 300 feet above me. They looked at me with curiosity but not alarm. I froze immediately, not wanting to frighten them and awestruck by this rare encounter. For the next few minutes we gazed at each other, man and animal locked in mutual fascination. I had no zoom lens for...