The Holy Grail - A story from our first attempt at chasing the Himalayan Snowcock

Words by Travis Warren, Photos by Wilbur Sensing

When the first light climbed over the ridge line, the two sleeping bags beside me started twitching like worms trying to burrow back underground. I cracked open the hood of my own bag and found a thin skin of frost had formed across it overnight, that alone was reason enough to stay put a little longer. 

The forecast had promised lows in the twenties, and honestly, I didn't need a thermometer to confirm it.

Our plan had been to cover the six miles to basecamp the evening before. But we didn't hit the trailhead until 4:30 p.m., and the route dropped straight through a deep valley, eating up what little daylight we had left. To make matters worse, I'd loaded up on caffeine, barely touched water, and eaten nothing but fast food during the five-hour drive from Reno. About a mile in, my choices caught up with me.

The terrain didn't do me any favors either. A creek ran the length of the valley, keeping the air thick and humid. I broke into a heavy sweat and my stomach turned. Meanwhile Matt practically floated up the trail ahead of us. I felt like dead weight dragging behind.

Eventually I came to my senses and called for a stop at a creek crossing so I could filter some water. Best decision of the day — I felt like a new person afterward, and we pushed on. Every so often Wil, handling the camera, would sprint past us to grab footage from a different angle before falling back again.

As the light faded, we agreed the final stretch would have to wait for morning — the trickiest section of trail was better tackled with visibility. We found a flat patch of grass near a small alpine lake, just big enough for the three of us. It wasn't our final destination, so we didn't bother setting up anything more than our pads and bags. The sky stayed clear, and sleeping out under the stars turned out to be surprisingly comfortable.

Morning came, we packed up, and headed for the granite ridge above camp. The route wound through boulders and scree fields still holding patches of snow from just weeks earlier. Crossing that exposed section in the cool morning air made the climb far more manageable.

We'd already noticed how dry everything looked — less green vegetation, watering holes that should have been full sitting empty. From the top of the ridge, we finally spotted the lake we'd chosen as our basecamp site. What should have been a decent-sized pool had shrunk to almost nothing. We hiked another three hundred yards to get a clearer look at what we were dealing with.

From a distance, the water looked coated in green film. I braced myself for algae, but it turned out to be grass instead. The real problem was the swarm of bugs sharing the eight-inch-deep puddle — that was going to make filtering a challenge. We set up camp anyway.

Once camp was squared away, Matt and I headed up the opposite ridge, hoping to cross fresh tracks from the birds we'd come for. Near the summit we picked our way along the ridgeline slowly, and soon fresh droppings started showing up on the rocks. A noise from the cliff face below caught my attention, and I crawled to the edge to look. Nothing was there — but far in the distance, we finally caught sight of what we were after: a Himalayan Snowcock, slipping away toward safer ground.

From up there I could also see clear down the canyon, nearly a thousand feet, to the lake where we'd camped the night before — and there was Alaskan Terry, wandering along the shoreline. We watched him for a while, puzzled, before deciding he must be fishing.

Sure enough, Terry eventually made his way up the valley toward our camp — and we timed our own return to meet him there. To our surprise, he showed up with a growler of beer and a water bladder packed full of brook trout. He'd hauled in stout and caught dinner for all of us.

Opening morning finally arrived, and we felt good about our odds. We stuck with the same route from our scouting trip, figuring if it worked once, it could work again. Climbing by headlamp, we moved carefully up to the ridge. Hunting snowcock, it turns out, calls for tactics similar to big-game hunting — glassing with binoculars to read a bird's behavior before attempting a stalk, with jump-shooting always a possibility. Spot-and-stalk was considered the gold standard.

We stopped at a gap in the rocks along the ridge to check our phones for messages, and that's when we heard a snowcock calling from the cliffs below. Staying hidden, we watched it waddle out toward the edge and let loose its call — something between a bugle and a bull elk's cry. It was a hell of a thing to witness.

We decided to try a stalk. Since the bird was perched on a sheer cliff face, Matt — our resident mountaineer — volunteered for the job. He wove through the rocks and vanished from sight almost immediately. Not long after, the bird began moving toward him and out of our line of view. Terry and I pushed further along the ridge, retracing Matt's path.

Heights aren't really my thing, so as Terry followed Matt, I chose the higher but safer route around. Just as I crested the top, a volley of shots echoed up from below. I looked down to see Matt standing on a rock outcrop, staring into the gap. "Did you get one?" I shouted. "No — I thought they were closer, so I threw a rock at them," he called back. Turned out the birds were farther down the cliff than he'd judged, and they scattered out of range. Still, just having the chance felt like a win.

The rest of the day passed quietly, with the heat doing most of the damage. At 10,500 feet, the sun bore down relentlessly, and finding water at that altitude became a real concern. Terry and I eventually stumbled on a small spring trickling over a boulder — cold, clean, and very welcome.

Back at camp that night, we talked strategy. The spot we'd been counting on had come up empty. After swapping notes with some nearby hunters, we decided to gamble on unfamiliar ground the next day. We had no real plan beyond that, but we went with it anyway.

Terry's obnoxious elk-bugle alarm woke us the next morning, and we set off in a new direction, back up to the ridge. We reached the top well before sunrise and settled in to glass the terrain, hoping to catch birds moving or calling. The sun eventually broke over the horizon and chased off the morning chill.

Once we could see clearly, we dropped down the far side of the mountain into territory we hadn't explored. That's when the real adventure kicks in — not knowing what's waiting around the next bend keeps you moving on hope alone. Matt split off to work his way lower, betting that opening-day pressure had pushed the birds down from the higher elevations.

Working through a stand of pinion pines, I heard that unmistakable call again drifting through the canyon. Looking out, I spotted a small group of birds flying toward an alpine lake marked on our map, somewhere beyond our sightline. We picked up the pace, hoping to close the distance, and soon the birds passed directly overhead while we stayed hidden in the trees.

I thought briefly about taking a shot — it would've been a passing shot, no different than shooting ducks on the wing. But a miss meant spooking them for good, so I held off and watched them sail up to the cliffs behind us. Almost right away, they started making a strange locating call I'd never heard before — close, but impossible to pinpoint. Matt caught up, out of breath, and asked why I hadn't fired. I explained my reasoning, and the two of us started climbing toward where the birds had landed.

We split into three directions and worked through a boulder field tucked against the bare face of the peak. I moved cautiously, half-expecting a bird to burst out from behind every rock. At one point I caught a glimpse of Terry off to my right, taking a swig from his water bottle, before he dropped out of sight again as I kept moving.

Then three shots rang out in quick succession, clearly from Terry's direction. I dropped all caution and scrambled across the boulder field toward the sound. Cresting the rocks, I saw it — from about a hundred yards off, in a shallow depression, lay the body of a Himalayan Snowcock. We'd actually done it — pulled off something most people never manage.

A flicker of movement snapped me back, and I spotted a second bird trying to scramble out of the same depression. I raised my shotgun without any real sense of the range, but sure I wasn't going to let the moment slip by. I fired, watched the shot connect, and the bird went still. It was a lot to take in.

I walked over, knelt down, and picked up my bird — its weight surprised me, dense like a mature sage grouse. Matt's head appeared below on the slope, and I walked out a few steps, holding the bird up so he could see. As he got closer, I told him I could still hear another one calling further up the mountain.

Matt dropped his pack without hesitation and took off up the incline. He moved fast, reached the ridge, then worked his way along the top as the bird kept calling. I watched him rise slightly from a low crouch and shoulder his gun — for a second I thought he had it — but he lowered the barrel and eased forward instead. Then he repeated the motion, and this time Terry and I both saw him rock back from the recoil. A second later, the sound of the shot rolled down the slope to meet the sight of it. We waited, hoping he'd connected, and after what felt like forever, he appeared at the top, outlined against the sky, holding up his bird for us to see.

We regrouped and moved quickly, wanting to get off the mountain before dark. As we hiked back toward camp, none of us said much — just letting it sink in. How had all three of us managed to beat the odds and come away with birds? Some would call it luck, and honestly, I can't argue.

Lucky to be healthy enough to make the trip. Lucky to have had the time. Lucky to have had families who supported it, and a couple of good friends to share it with. Yeah — we were lucky.