Everyone was tired last night, but very relieved to be at camp (in record time!). We appreciated the leisurely 09:00 breakfast, but after that the training started straight away as we hope to be out tomorrow for a climb up a nearby valley to check some camera traps. The weather is hot and sunny, allowing us to crack on with the introductory talks, presentations and compass/GPS training. We haven’t had to wait long for the wildlife either; we have seen marmot, fox, eagle and already one of the main preys of the snow leopard, the ibex, from the camp! At time of writing Jenny is going through some of the datasheets to be filled out and we have another presentation later.
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/altai)
Another day, another group (welcome all on group 4), another leader, another long, but beautiful drive with glaciers visible on the mountains. The half-way sauna and river swim was enjoyed by all; the queuing for permits not so much, but we accept this as part of the adventure now. I am writing this from the last control gate before the Altai mountains open up before us for a late night base camp arrival and more snow leopard conservation adventures…
Best wishes
Adam
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/altai)
We’ve just finished the turnaround at Novosibirsk and I have handed over to Adam Stickler (see www.biosphere-expeditions.org/staff) for the last two groups. Adam will be trained by Jenny (who is also a full-blown expedition leader in her other lives in Namibia and the Azores for example). I am writing this from the Sibir in Novosibirsk, waiting for my flight back to Australia tonight. Here’s the summary (with pictures at https://biosphereexpeditions.wordpress.com/) of what happened on slot 3 since the last update.
22 July
Base camp was like a beehive this morning, buzzing with activity. We were getting ready for our first overnighter at Salyugem lake and it is quite incredible how much stuff we manage to pack into our small backpacks. Not only all our sleeping gear, but also the food for two days and all the scientific gear Jenny needs. Coming up the valley we really did look like an expedition.
The first ibex of the day showed up not far from the forest and when we climbed the very last ledge facing the lake, there was another herd of 15. The overnight team set up advanced camp while I headed back with Samara and Dani. Although tired, they negotiated the famous lake scree magnificently and we flew through the valley. And then Samara saw another viper. She certainly has a gift for animal spotting.
When we got to base camp, the weather took a turn for the worse. The whole steppe was bathed in thick haze and cold and a strong wind was blowing through. But looking over Salyugem, there was not a cloud in sight.
23 July
It was a cold night and the lake team felt it first thing in the morning. Climbing up the ridge it even started hailing, but luckily it didn’t last too long and no one got too wet. Then the disappointment of the non-functional camera trap (see my 23 July entry below). The entire team then took a lesson from Oleg in scree running and safely made it back to the lake. They enjoyed their time in the mountains so much that they didn’t make it back to base until 19:00.
We didn’t have a bad day at base either. In the very early morning we headed to Kokoria with Olga to stock up on groceries, only to find the shop closed. Luckily someone saw us hanging around and alerted the shop owner, a lovely lady called Irina, who came running after us and kindly opened her “magazine”. Later on I took the rest of the group and went to find the elusive petroglyph everyone keeps talking about. After some rather extensive search, we found an enormous wall with numerous inscriptions of mostly deer, ibex and wild boar. On the small rock nearby was an incredibly realistic depiction of a man on a horse hunting deer. A very enjoyable afternoon.
Unfortunately that was it for the science for the day. Samara’s birthday determined the course of the evening. Happy birthday!
25 July
Excellent day! Time to retrieve our first camera in Kunduayk valley. Walking well above the river, we wondered why we have very little water at camp when only a kilometre up the river is still a raging torrent. We reached the end of the valley in record time. Jenny and Oleg took Gordon and Dani to take a look at the saddle above the main ridge, but it was hard for them to cross the slippery scree. Meanwhile Fred, Mark, Friedie and I climbed to the camera trap and I nervously slipped the memory card into my laptop. It was quite a relief to find it full of ibex pictures. We left the camera there, hoping for more and slowly returned to base camp where we were rewarded for our efforts by Olga’s excellent borscht and a spectacular sunset later on.
26 July
Last day in the mountains. Kampi Petrovich has kindly agreed to show us his secret valley with mineral springs and possibly a waterfall. We picked him up from his yurt, attended to his injured horse and set off. Yet again it was glorious day and the drive through the steppe was spectacular. Fred and Mark negotiated all the stream crossing and bogs really well and before long, we arrived at one the most beautiful valleys I have ever seen. Unfortunately the mineral spring was full of mud, to Kampi’s disgust, so we headed off over to the waterfall. Once we climbed the short hill, the scenery got even better, with a blue lake dominating the landscape. While some decided to rest by the lake, Fred, Gordon and I headed over to the waterfall a little bit further on. 15 minutes later we were sitting in the cool pool below. Mark and Friedy kept the science going and spotted both a golden eagle’s nest and two lammergeyers flying in and out. They then topped it up with three ibex on the top of the ridge. What a great day. Or was it? After all the training and explaining how to get through the mud, I managed to get myself nicely stuck with the Land Rover and there was nothing that would move the car. In the end we had to jack each wheel and put rocks under it to get it out. Our camp fire was roaring till late at night, as was Gordon and with his beautiful signing. Ivan then recited some Russian poems to us before we finally retired to bed.
27 and 28 July
The scenery on the way was spectacular; nothing like we have seen before. Clear skies meant that for the first time we could see the Altai mountains in their full beauty. We made it to Kamlak in record time and all plunged into the river to cool down. We noticed the forest fires along the way and the ever-present smell of smoke. Later on we found out that we were in the midst of one of the worst forest fires in Siberian history, so far wiping out around 50,000 hectares of forest.
We arrived back at Novosibirsk in the afternoon. It has been great expedition, well done team 3. You will be missed. All the best for Adam’s teams four and five – I will be thinking of you and follow Adam’s diaries with interest.
Best wishes
Jiri
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/altai)
Just a quick one now with more details when have a minute in between switching groups and handing over to Adam. Thank you group 3, you have been excellent and we have achieved a lot (see Jenny’s presentation on http://www.slideshare.net/BiosphereExpeditions/altai-snow-leopard-expedition-iii2012).
Roll in group 4 and 5!
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/altai)
We have spent the last couple of days scouring the ridges, hillsides and valleys. Nine camera traps are now in place, seven on the Talduair range close to base and a couple on Chickachova. It’s arduous work getting these camera traps out into the mountains, which is why you, our team members are so crucial. You could have gone for the cushy option of a beach holiday with a book, but instead you opted to come out here and help us research this mountain ghost and the tough habitat it calls home. All credit to you and thanks.
One of the Talduair cameras had fresh scrapes right in front of it, but then the camera did not work! Poor Jenny is tearing her hair out, but we are getting close. Our partners in the Altai, such as WWF Russia will be very interested in these news as Talduair is an area they are particularly interested in.
Oh, and by the way – THE WEATHER HAS BEEN GLORIOUS! We only have three days left with this group and we hope the weather will hold. Watch this space for further updates!
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/altai)
We left Novosibirsk on Monday and for the first time managed to get through the permit palaver in Gorno Altaisk as per plan A, so no need for B, C and D, or so we thought until first one of the Land Rovers and then one of the team members started playing up. So some minor repairs and major altercations later, we finally arrived at base, still late as usual and minus one person. My thanks and gratitude to the remaining team who put up with a lot and pulled together like a real expedition team.
Then my tooth started playing up too, but luckily we have Friedy, a retired dentist, and Dani, a pharmacist with a bag full of pills to prove it, on the team. I was expertly taken care of (whilst Jenny did all the training sessions, thank you) and Gordon kept making chipmunk impressions behind my back 😉
News was then brought on Thursday by our local friend Kampi of snow leopards above his winter station not far away. Under Jenny’s guidance we jumped into the Land Rovers to have a look and make a plan K. The landscape has changed a lot because of the heavy rains, but the Land Rovers pulled through all the streams, which had turned into rivers.
Our new cook Olija is also delivering, conjuring up stews, borschts (sp?), and all sorts of tasty servings.
On Friday we split the team in two – one to survey the plan K snow leopard ridge, the second to retrieve a camera trap, yielding pictures of shaggy ibexes still shedding their winter coat. Jenny and her team hit the jackpot and found snow leopard scrapes on the ridge, then placed camera traps to hopefully catch their makers.
I wish the Altaian ground squirrels would all also meet their makers! Cute and ubiquitous as they are, they are also chewing through everything. Mark’s rucksack, Gordon’s towel, Jenny’s trousers, my favourite T-shirt; perhaps they’ll have indigestion soon and leave us alone! Unlikely.
Today we took it a little “easier” and retrieved another camera trap. Samara, Mark, Oleg, Jenny and I climbed to another ridge. The views were breathtaking, as were the camera trap pictures. It started slow with red-billed choughs, a family of Altai snowcocks and then…Pallas cat! This very rarest of cats is meant to be a steppe dweller, so to catch it on candid camera at 3000 m is as remarkable as getting a picture of it in the first place. Well done everyone! Just rewards for keeping your nerves through the horrible start.
P.S. I am sorry there are no pictures of the camera traps, but I am struggling to get them sent through from our remote location.
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia
How can I sum up the last group in a few words and apologise for not having been in touch much. Well, the weather has been perfectly horrid with lots of rain, interspersed by some sunny spells and our BGAN satellite phone is playing up so we are really in the middle of (communication) nowhere.
Anyway, the third group has arrived and we are on our way back to the Altai. Highlights of the second group include:
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Our local friends treating us to a party. We had no idea where all the food came from, but within a minute, Irina’s table was heaving under a load of home-made bread, luscious cream, several types of cheese, pickled apples – it all tasted so delicious.
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A very playful family of long-eared or Altai voles. We found them living with pikas and getting along famously.
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After the usual and seemingly endless permit hassles, we finally crossed into the border exclusion zone and felt very special indeed. The valley we set up the camp in was breathtaking. Steppe on one side and spectacular series glaciers on the other. This was argali, ibex and snow leopard country. Remote, protected (by default by boarder guards) and undisturbed.
We were itching to hit the slopes and soon we found ourselves walking on a narrow ledge above the camp, following a well-worn argali track. And then I spotted my first argali. A small herd of seven. We were thrilled. Not having seen them before, I didn’t know how they would react, but they seemed very timid and came within just 200 metres of us. We tracked them all the way down to the river, we even crawled on our bellies to get a closer look, when they suddenly vanished.
The next morning Jenny and Oleg took Carol, Andy, Dermott and Janine to the very top of the ridge overlooking our camp and my group and I started walking the road, which was snaking up into the valley. Oleg mentioned something about an abandoned mine, but we didn’t really see much until we reached a small plateau, well above 3000 m. It was quite a shock to see the hand of humans at work. Rusty machinery, rotting wood, ghastly buildings and in the middle of it, an old mining shaft. We steered well clear of it all and kept walking. Argali were abundant above the ridges and we found some sort of “argali hotel”, as Susan put it. Shallow depressions, dug into the scree by hundreds of animals, looking for a place to rest. The view over the saddle was breathtaking. We knew we were in the snow leopard country. As we reached an altitude of well above 3300 m, all credit goes to Louisa who scrambled to her record altitude without even losing a breath.
Jenny’s group had a hard time walking up the steep hill, but they were extremely lucky to find both scrapes and scat of what surely must have been a snow leopard. This was a great news and confirmation we are in the right area. With two camera traps set up high on the ridges, we just have to wait and see. What a great day!
Our Chikacheva trip, if only two days long, proved to be great success. We found scat, scrapes and set up three camera traps, high above the ridges. I am sure everyone would have liked to stay a bit longer, but the end of this group was beckoning.
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/altai)
There’s been a sunny day down in the Altai (for a change) and our expedition is now moving towards Chicacheva ridge for their surveys and camera-trapping.
Whilst they are out there collecting more data, you may be interested in the latest publication, just out, called “Snow Leopard Conservation in Russia” (available from www.wwf.ru/resources/publ/book/eng/599). Our work over the years is mentioned several times (pages 15, 18) and also that there is “a great deal of opportunity to develop collaborations with such internationally known organizations as Biosphere Expeditions that involve tourists and volunteers in monitoring rare species, including the snow leopard.” (page 81).
Things are changing in the Altai with the establishment of community-based initiatives such as a snow leopard museum in Kosh-Agach or the “Kosh-Agach District Community Ecological Inspection Team for the Protection of Natural and Cultural Heritage”. We are now working closely with other organisations such as the WWF (on co-ordinating our research efforts and creating local incentives), the Altai Project and the Foundation for Sustainable Altai (on involving local people) or academic instutions in Novosibirsk and Gorno Altaisk (on our expedition placement / scholarship programme for local students).
None of this would be possible without the help and finance that is provided by you, our expedition participants, so thank you very much for this. For those of you who have been on the expedition, we hope this makes it all worthwhile; for those of you yet to make the trip to the Altai with us, we hope it will increase your enthusiasm and resolve to put up with the foul weather we are having at the moment, the bureaucracy and whatever else the Altaian home of the snow leopard may be throwing at us in the weeks to come.
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/altai)
4 July
After a late night arrival at 23:00 the previous evening and an exhausted team heading straight for some shut-eye, I could finally see what my team looked like as they were slowly emerging from their tents. We introduced each other over Nina’s hot porridge and despite the rain, started with the training. After lunch we split into two groups and while Jenny ran her science session with one, I did the Land Rover training with the other. Carol, Andy and Janine turned out to be excellent drivers and needed very little guidance. Rock crawl over some medium size boulders turned out to be the most popular activity, but what impressed me most was Louise reversing back into our car park, using only side mirrors!
5 July
Clouds still hanging over the camp, but luckily on the way out. We all headed up to Manul rock, to see if we could find any signs of elusive Pallas cat actually living there. We found nothing, but on the way to the saddle, we discovered plenty of very fresh argali and ibex droppings.
After lunch, we grabbed the compasses and not only found our way around the camp, but also learnt that North is the same in both the Northern and the Southern hemisphere. Quite a shock to some 😉
I took Jenny to see my new find, the nest of an imperial eagle, only a short distance from the camp. The chick, already loosing its white fluff and growing proper feathers, treated us with suspicion as we sat nearby.
6 July
We were determined not to get beaten by the weather today and left the camp quite early, heading up Kunduyak valley. Susan, Louis and I went ahead to reunite with the group later. With clouds hanging ominously above us for most of the day, we marched all the way to the glacier and then split up. Jenny and I started the long slog to our first camera trap, taking with us Janine, Andy, Carol and Dermott.
Andy, an engineer, had a look at mysterious device we had found previously and to our disappointment confirmed it was just remnants of a meteorological balloon. Unfortunately we found our camera face down, right next to fresh ibex droppings. Grrrr!!!! A nearby rock fall was to blame for destroying our hopes, but luckily not the camera. Not all was lost though, as the camera did operate for three whole days and captured some great night images of…mountain hare. Small victory. We secured the camera even better and left it there, hoping.
Walking back to base camp turned out to be bit of an endurance event. Good weather turned its back on us and we were soon caught in torrential rain, sleet and hail. Back at camp the sun reappeared to help us dry all our wet clothes. Welcome to the high mountains! The Land Rovers looked a bit like Xmas trees, decorated with all that dripping gear.
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/altai)
Team 2 has made it to our half-way point in the Altai.
The permit fun continues with two very similar forms for entry to the Altai Republic, one acceptable, the other one apparently not. Common sense and pragmatism do not prevail here and so it’s back to our half-way point and back again this morning to fill in more forms. What fun! We should get to base late tonight to forget about bureaucrats and drown our sorrows in snow leopard survey work for a week or so. You have to laugh or you’d have to cry 😉
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia
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