Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia)

OMG John... what a wonderful start to your Gallery. Did it take you long to find her?

A superb picture of this magnificent creature - many thanks for sharing it with us.

Outstanding shot a pleasure to view tfs

Good grief, what a shot! Congratulations, you jammy so and so!!

James

What a fantastic image !!! Thanks for sharing,

Its Awesome John, Fantastic Image Tfs!!!!!!!
All The Best
Sue & Simon,

You are one very lucky person see one of these never mind this great photo. Poster Print on the wall now.

Fabulous capture,John.You are a very fortunate person to have seen this species in the wild.An old friend of ours tried 3 times without success last century!

Stunning capture. I would give my right arm to get a shot like this

Thanks for the comments guys - really nice. We had extreme good fortune during our trip. I was worried that mid March was too late, but it worked out quite the opposite. We'd seen this female with her cub before we'd even reached out tents - at long range, but we were elated and had no idea what was about to happen over the coming days. We had an incredible run of sightings involving this mum and her cub, as well as two males competing for her attentions. The official line was that we had seen seven individuals, because our second sighting was of 3 animals, thought to be a female with 2 cubs, but after checking photos and comparing faces, I am as certain as I can be that this sighting involved a male and the same female with her cub - so I think we saw four. The female, cub and two males then spent a few days near the start of Rumbak Valley, where lots of drama happened. The cub was separated from the female by the dominant male. Lots of mating followed and a new male turned up. There was a ferocious, but brief fight between the two males and we were concerned that the cub might be killed during the night. However, next morning the female and cub were together further up the valley and there was no sign of either male. The photos of the cub and female were taken at the narrow part of Rumbak Valley late in the afternoon. They actually crossed to our side of the river and continued up the path. People coming the other way could have bumped right into them. I didn't take any photos of this though, because it was getting dark and I wanted to take it all in. They had been refound the next day and we watched them following some Blue Sheep. As far as we could tell they hadn't fed in several days and also had a fair amount of stress on top. We wished them luck as dusk fell on our last sighting of the trip. The people working in Snow Leopard conservation in that area are doing a wonderful job.

Simply wonderful what more can i say !!
tfs
Mark