Out of the shadows the elusive Central Asian snow leopard steps inot a risk-filled future.

Snow leopard don't care much for company.So to get close,Photographer Steve Winter deployed a series of camera traps that automatically snapped pictures whenever an animal crept near.The result is a set of intimate portraits that expands our vision of a legendary mountain recluse.Rub,scratch,urinate,defecate-a snow leopard marks its trail with often pungent graffti.The scent helps these solitary cats avoid confrontation in territory they share.During mating season.though,the scent is meants as magnet.As few as 3500 of these endangered cats may survive in the wild.To traverse rocky slopes and survive in cold mountain climes-even at altitudes as high as 18000 feet-snow leopards are well equipped.Long hair with thick underful,wide,well-padded paws,and big chest and strong lungs keep these cats running up where the air gets thin.



You almost have to turn away for a minute to tell the animal is going anywhere.If it knocks a stone loose,it will reach out a foot to stop it from falling and making noise.One might be moving right now,perfectly silent and perfectly tensed,maybe close by.But where?That's always the question.That,and how many are left to see?Raghunandan Singh Chundawat has watched snow leopards as often as anyone alive.The New Delhi biologist studied them closely for five years in Hemis High Altitude National Park in Ladakh,the largest,loftiest district of northern India,and carried out wildlife surveys in the region over nine traditional years.We're in the 1300 suqare mile park this evening,setting up camp in a deeply cleft canyon near 12000 feet.It's June,and the blue sheep have new lamps.We keep one eye on a group crossing a scree slope,the other eye on the cliffs at its top.Leopards are are ambush hunters that like to attack from above.While the common leopard of Asia and Africa relies on branches and leaves for concealment,the snow leopard loses itself among steep jumbles of stone.This is exactly the kind of setting one would favor.But I'm not holding my breath.Raghu has sighted only a few dozen in his whole career.



Lengthening shadows coalesce into dusk.Wild roses perfune the Himalayan canyon as passing squalls brush the ridgetops with new now.I imagine a leopard easing down the darkened slopes.It flows low to the ground,with huge gold eyes and a coat the color of dappled moonlight on frost.The body stretches four feet from nose to rump.It's tail,the most striking in the feline family,is almost as long,and so thick and mobile it looks as if the cat is being followed by a fuzzy python.The snow leonpard sometimes uses its tail to send signals during social encounters or to wrap partway around itself like a scarf when bedded down in bitter weather.But the main function of this plume is to add balance in an environment with thousand-foot drops.In Mongolia a park ranger once told me he'd seen snow leopards crouch and sway that plume in the air to lure curious marmots closer,just as hunters do with rags.Possible.But I heard a simpler explanation from Sodnomdeleg Bazarhuyag,a retired doctor in a community of herders in northwestern Mongolia.We went to search out snow leopard sign in a gorge glistening with river ice.When a bend of scimitar-horned wild goats ibex appeared on the skyline,Bazarhuyag scanned carefully around them saying,Snow leopards are good at hiding,but sometimes they forget about their tail.



Darkness claims the last crags.Raghu and I won't glimpse a snow leopard this day.It's not a disappointment.The great cat is only living up to its reputation for being impossible to find.Called shan in Ladakhi,irbis in Mongolian,and brafani chita-snow cheetah-in Urdu,the carnivore scientists label Unica uncia ranges across about a million square miles and portions of 12 nations.You'll never hear one give away its whereabouts by roaring,it lacks the throat structure,though it can hiss,chuffmmew,growl,and wail.Beside being secretive,well camouflaged,amd usually solitary,snow leopards are most active at night and in the twilight hours of dusk and dawn,amid the most formidable tumult of mountains on Earth,the Himalaya and Karakoram,the Plateau of Tibet and adjoining Kunlun,the Hindu Kush,Pamirsmand Tian Shan,the Altay,whose peaks define Mongolia's border with China,Kazakhstan,and Russia,and the Sayan chain west of Lake Baikal.