Searching for the "ghost of the mountains"

Brut America

He climbed the peaks of the Himalayas to catch sight of the "ghost of the mountains". Michel d'Oultremont - Photographer told Brut nature about his journey in search of the iconic snow leopard.

Transcript

00:00I feel like shit because I'm carrying nothing, just my binoculars, we are at 4006m, Tanzin is giving the way,

00:10I have my tripod on my shoulders, the dogs behind me with my camera bag.

00:16Fuck, without them I would be nowhere.

00:30The snow panther is a real ghost, it's an animal that fascinates because it's hard to find,

00:58we don't know it very well, there are very few of them left.

01:00Its camouflage is immobility, it doesn't move, it just waits for time to pass,

01:05or for an ibex or a buck to pass by it to be able to hunt it.

01:08And to spot it, you have to know its paths, its places, its passages,

01:12it often takes the same places, the same crevasses, the same small promontories,

01:17and by knowing these places, you just have to observe for a long time,

01:20with binoculars or long-sightedness, and at some point we find it,

01:23it appears in our field of vision, and that's magical.

01:38My friend Tanzin saw a panther at the bottom of the mountain where we were this morning,

01:45so we're going back down, there's still a long way to go.

01:49There are blue chips not very far from the panther,

01:56and so we're walking along the mountain to try to go fast enough,

02:02but the snow is quite deep, so we have to be careful.

02:49I can't do it, it's so hard.

03:02It lives in a great drought, in the heart of the Himalayas, at a fairly high altitude,

03:07and it's very cold in the winter, from minus 20 to minus 40 degrees,

03:10but in the summer it's quite warm and quite dry,

03:12so it's in very complicated, very specific conditions,

03:16and it's not easy to go where it lives.

03:19The very first time I met it, I was very lucky, it was the first day.

03:22It was the first time on the field, I arrive near a throat,

03:26and I see a female followed by three young,

03:28three young for a panther is quite rare,

03:30and they went on vacation, they went into a cave,

03:34and just this vision of this first snow panther next to it,

03:38it was really fabulous, it was a unique moment and really magical to see.

03:46Snow panther

03:51There is a photo that I appreciated a lot, that I was able to take there,

03:54it's a little snow panther lost in a completely snowy landscape,

03:57so there is a lot of snow, the image is very white,

04:00there is just a trace of buckthorn, and the panther was sleeping in this trace there,

04:04so I arrived there, I saw it sleeping there,

04:07and it got up, it turned around, it took the trace of buckthorn,

04:10and I was able to photograph it like that, it didn't last very long,

04:12more or less a minute before it disappeared behind a cliff,

04:15and during this little minute, I was able to take about fifteen pictures,

04:18which I particularly like.

04:42Snow panther

05:12Snow panther

05:43The images that I hope will serve this protection,

05:46it's an animal that is so emblematic of the wild Himalayas,

05:51and of these great mountains, which are completely fabulous to see,

05:55that without it, without the snow panther that would live in the Himalayas,

05:59the Himalayas would really lose one of its symbols.

06:12For more UN videos visit www.un.org

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