Saving the Ghost of the Mountain by Sy Montgomery

She also worked in a pit crawling with eighteen thousand snakes in Manitoba handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana and swam with piranhas, electric eels, and dolphins in the Amazon. With a dazzling, as-it-happens narrative and spectacular photographs, Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop bring Mongolia up close for readers everywhere.Sy Montgomery is a lifelong explorer: she has made four trips to Peru and Brazil to study the pink dolphins of the Amazon and on other expeditions, she was chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica undressed by an orangutan in Borneo and hunted by a tiger in India. But that's the only way the Snow Leopard Trust can protect their charges, before the snow leopard truly becomes nothing but a ghost of the mountain.

It will take patience, focus-and yes, love-to dedicate a lifetime learning more about this little-understood creature.

It will take practice and experience to lay humane leghold snares, collect scat samples, and set up motion-triggered cameras. It will take endurance and persistence to climb the dusty mountain trails, hope of a snow leopard sighting rising and falling with each new summit. And it doesn't stop Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop from packing their bags in order to join Tom on a trek to Mongolia, where they hope to learn more about this magical cat, a cat who doesn't give up its secrets easily. Slinking along the Mongolian mountain ridges, the snow leopards are invisible-and almost impossible to study.īut that doesn't deter scientist Tom McCarthy, Conservation Director of the Seattle-based Snow Leopard Trust, or his many colleagues from dedicating their lives' work to the study and protection of this seldom-seen creature. A thick, long tail for balance helps snow leopards spring at their prey from great distances-prey that is often three times its own size. Beautiful spotted coats conceal these elusive cats in their rocky, high-altitude habitat-a place where temperatures are often cold enough to freeze human tears. People call it The Ghost of the Mountain, for those who live among snow leopards almost never see one.

Saving the Ghost of the Mountain by Sy Montgomery