Just before lunch, we got a call that a "kill" had been spotted, so we packed up and headed that direction. The trackers had gotten there and had pictures, checking out the kill, and determined (and Bina confirmed) that it was, indeed, a snow leopard kill. Apparently, a herder saw two goats up on the rocks last night and decided to go up and retrieve them this morning if they didn't come down. I'm not sure why he didn't go after them when he saw them since they know snow leopards are in the area and that snow leopards only attack on the rocks. Now that I re-read that, maybe I DO understand why the herder didn't go into the rocks! Anyway, this morning, he went out to retrieve them and one had been killed and the other was stuck in a crevice from trying to run. The herder went up and tried to save the stuck one, but it ended up falling to its death. Instead of trying to hunt down the snow leopard that killed his goats, the herder called up one of our trackers and let them know what happened. Based on past behavior, the leopard isn't expected to come out to feed again during the day, especially with the herder close. So we went back to camp for lunch and to bring lunch back to the trackers while they stayed in the area to watch for the snow leopard.
While at camp, we learned that our flight from Ulaistai to Ulaanbaatar was cancelled and unable to be rescheduled. This meant we would have to give up on potentially seeing the Eurasian lynx, which would be a long shot anyway, but we add back the Przewalski horse and Saiga antelope.
After a quick lunch, we returned where we left the trackers, and the snow leopard had come out to sun himself. He was far, far away. He was even difficult to see through the 60X Swarovski spotting scope, but see him we absolutely did! It was exciting! While we were standing around in the sun, I got hot, so I took off my parka. You would have thought I grew another head! These tough Mongolian men, accustomed to the western, mountainous steppe in early spring, in layers with traditional deels, and I'm stripping off my parka. Keep in mind that I'm still wearing my merino wool base layer and my sweater. There's no wind; the sun is out; and it's probably just above freezing. And I might have a touch of POTS, so my autonomic nervous system was having some difficulty with the lack of activity and being on my feet.
We tried to move to what should be a better vantage point, but it would be difficult to get there. We agreed to give it a try. With assistance, I was able to make it up about halfway, but when we had to make the turn to go up the edge, a little fear of heights hit my companion, and we ended up coming back down. By the time we got down, the trackers had found an even better vantage point that was easy to get to and at the same altitude as our leopard so we headed over there.
For some reason, we couldn't get the ball head on my tripod to hold well, so we're stuck with the limitations of my abilities, which include my tremor. It was awesome! The trackers and guides were all just as excided as we were at seeing this guy. Apparently, he's a large boy with a scar over his nose. They call him Scarface, and they've only ever seen him on trail cameras until now. He was just on the next hilltop. Estimates of distance are about 400 meters, but the admission from everybody is that nobody is really very good at judging distance. I used a crop sensor camera with a 150-600 mm lens and a 2x teleconverter, so I got a distance of 1200 mm plus whatever the math works out to when factoring in the crop sensor. Plus, I cropped into these further.
He spent most of the day, snuggled up like this. He wasn't concerned about us at all.
He made it obvious that he knew we were there by periodically raising his head and looking at us.
Sometimes, he had a lick and yawn.
The trackers mounted a cell phone holder to the Swarovski 60x scope, and got even better looks when also zooming in on the phone cameras. Here's a video they took on my phone. Galaxy S24. The 60x is estimated to be around 1200mm, and the S24 has a 30x zoom, so from what I can understand (and I could be wrong), that would be around 1500mm. Somebody who knows this stuff can fill me in if they want.
Back to my shot of him looking at us. No concern at all in his beautiful blue eyes!
At one point, a bird flew over and caught his attention.
At one point, he rolled over, giving us the "back of disdain".
As it started getting night, he stood up and gave us a long look
and headed to the other side of the hill without even saying, "Goodbye!" Sorry about the shakiness. My tremor was getting worse because I was tired and cold. Yes, I had put my coat back on long before and the sun was going down.
When we got back to camp, it was dark, and people were talking about how lucky we were to see him. After thinking about it a little bit, I had to argue that it wasn't really luck. Bina and Yumchin, the principals of Soaring Expeditions, have worked very hard to set trail cameras, train the trackers, develop relationships with the herders and other community members, and studied the activities of the local fauna for many years. The trackers have grown their skill over the years, too. Without all of that work and dedication, the herder wouldn't have even thought about calling us. Without all of that work, the trackers wouldn't have known how to watch for him to come out and what radial area he may come out into. Without all of that work, nobody would have a clue of how Scarface may act. And without knowledge of the terrain and how to move around without spooking him, the trackers never would have been able to locate that good viewing vantage point. I contend that there was more skill involved than luck on our ability to see our first snow leopard. The guys humbly agreed. After dinner, we all headed to our respective gers with warm fuzzies to accompany the fires. I don't know about everybody else, but I dreamed of more cats!
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