Winter Camp
Notes From the Field
by Rodney Jackson
Ladakh Base Camp: 25 Jan 2004
I arrived to a second winter, in Leh, on the 7th. The hour-long flight from Dehli was delayed for 5 hours due to a pea-soup thick ground fog, but the wait was certainly worth the long airport-lounge-torture. As we headed from the plains northward across the Himalaya, the sky became increasingly blue and more vibrant, the mountains peppered with white, then glimmering glaciers and snowfields, the terrain ever more barren of vegetative cover. Welcome to the land of the snow leopard!
The Indian Air Force, which operates Leh airport, were playing ice-hockey on the end of the strip, as the Jet Airways blue Boeing 737, filled with 40 happy Ladakhis and two foreigners (myself and a French tourist anxious to walk the ice-bound Zanskar River trek), swooped low past Spituk Monastery. Before I could search the hills to see if I could pick the ridgeline where one of our camera traps has been out for the past year, the plane landed uphill at a speed of perhaps close to 200 knots, bouncing and throwing us forward in our seats, as near weightless gravity took hold for a few milliseconds.
Rinchen and Tashi were at the airport to meet me and I was soon in a warm room at the Panorama Hotel, situated above Leh at about 12,000 feet. To the south is a splendid panoramic view of the Indus and fringing Zanskar Mountains – where our cats roam and seemingly flourish, thanks to the hard work of Rinchen and SLC’s associates, and the commitment being shown by the local villagers.
Everyone remarked on how warm it was (yes only 15-25 degrees Fahrenheit at night!) and how little snow blanketed the higher mountains, compared to their childhood. Global warming may well have reached here; after all, reports of receding glaciers span the entire Himalaya and Central Asian plateau.
All this of course means that wildlife is higher than normal, staying above 15,000 feet to enjoy the sun-drenched westerly facing slopes, and avoiding the colder valleys where the low sun penetrates for a few hours at most. However, the day before I planned to leave Leh for our base camp in Hemis National Park, it snowed 4-6 inches. This made the narrow two-wheel cliff-side jeep track that leads to the trailhead into base camp even more dangerous, especially with ice on the north-facing 90-degree bends. Not appealing, considering the almost sheer drop 500 – 1,000 feet straight into the frigid Indus River, carrying its usual load of riverine icebergs down toward the Pakistan border. Hence our wise decision to wait a day, until we could hire a reliable 4-WD vehicle for the hourlong drive. Our Gysey jeep, loaned from the film crew, was unavailable as they were expected from Britain that same day.
Next morning, we managed to find a well-maintained vehicle and left at the first opportunity. Less than 30 minutes
after leaving the roadhead and walking up the trail, I was greeted by a snow leopard. There, on a thin layer of snow over
solid stream ice beside a wooden bridge were the approximately 2 hour old pugmarks of a cat heading down-valley. Now I
wondered if that barking dog, upset at something on the rocky slopes above the first village, might just have seen the cat
itself... Even the livestock were alert looking toward a deep gulley. I spent 15 minutes scanning the area with binoculars,
but saw nothing of interest except for a flock of snow finches and a pair of magpies busily turning over fresh cow dung
(for beetles?). Just like Uncia to be a ghost creature!
Jigmet and Tashi had set up camp in the main gorge above the confluence with a major stream (nullah to the local people). All the nullahs are frozen solid and as slick as oil on glass angled at 45 degrees at this time of year. In other words, unless you are a Ladakhi, do not try to walk across this stuff without first throwing handfuls of sand ahead of you for sufficient purchase. And even then... get prepared for the periodic fall.
Camp is very civilized, with stone-edged trails leading to each tent, and a welcoming sign indicating the way to the “office” (a green “pixie” tent, intended to seat 4 with comfort), a kitchen parachute structure, Rodney Jackson’s house (a yellow North Face dome tent), Rinchen Wangchuk’s tent house, Jigmet’s abode and even a “dustbin for non-bio-degradable rubbish. The office has an LPG gas heater inside, a real plastic floor mat, some camp stools edged with trunkfulls of equipment, especially remote sensors (TrailMasters) and 35 mm cameras, and a solar-powered light to work at night.
Our main task is to conduct a scientifically rigorous census of the snow leopard population within a 60-80+ square mile area of Hemis National Park. This means placing cameras strategically throughout the area, but no closer than a mile to each other. 75% of the seventeen stations will be placed in good habitat, the rest in “poor” but potentially suitable habitat for the cat. We place all the remote cameras along natural snow leopard travel lanes so that theoretically we should have a good chance of capturing (i.e., photographing) each animal which uses each of the 12 or so survey blocks we hope to cover. The camera stations are placed at elevations from 12,000 to just under 16,000 feet. They take about 1-2 hours to set up (not counting “walking to time”), using locally collected stones for elevating both camera and receiver-transmitter units above the ground, and in order to camouflage them with the background. Each station has two cameras to film the cat from both sides, so we can build our image library quickly.
Our pilot study of last year stands us in good form, for we have learned where to place cameras to achieve greatest success at capturing different cats. And our trapping success has risen from one snow leopard every 55 days or nights in 2001-2002 to one a week last year. In order to come up with a statistically valid population estimate, we will need to capture on film, and then identify from their individually distinctive spotting patterns, most of the cats active in the area – at least once, and preferably 2-3 or more times. Last winter the work was comparatively easy, as nearly all of the cameras were within a one-hour walk of camp.
Now, as I write this letter under the solar light, we have 14 stations operative, with most of them being at least 2-3 hours walk away. Thus, Rinchen, Jigmet and I have had our work cut out for us, to visit each camera station at least twice a week to make sure everything is working well and to record the travel patterns of any visitor, from snow leopard to fox and wolf, village livestock and the odd herder.
In the week or so that the traps have been up, we have at least 5 cats photographed, but did miss several that walked through the day before cameras were activated, and one that stopped just one yard short of the camera, deciding instead to return the way it had come. Oh well. Who said cats had a poor sense of smell or the good sense to keep away from the paparazzi!
(continued)
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