Fundamentally, the Snow Leopard Track aims to inspire the emergence of grassroots community-led conservancies, but its vision is trifocal - relying on the maintenance of a mutualistic relationship between trekkers, local communities, and a robust ecosystem. Pastoralist communities build the trails, trekkers stimulate these small rural economies, and together the two parties can help maintain the landscapes and environment on which both depend. Conversely, affluent, contented rural populations are much less likely to urbanize, and therefore can go on upkeeping the old trails and the old ways, leaving less room for industrial-scale environmental exploitation.
We maintain that the trail is a potent medium for disseminating conscientious ecological stewardship bilaterally across the local-foreigner membrane, a means of preserving regional traditions and ideals and of empowering small communities, and an effective buffer against irreversible land and water degradation.
The SLT is a high-altitude international thru-hike that threads the continuous mountain chain between Nepal and Kyrgyzstan. It currently spans 7 countries over the course of 9400km, with a vertical gain figure of around 650km. The terrain glimpsed in this span ranges from subtropical forest to glacial plains to barren desert canyons, from 620m in the depths of Manaslu's Budhi Gandakhi Gorge to the 6622m summit of Chamser Kangri.
The trail traverses the entirety of Nepal and the Indian states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh, and Kashmir. It departs the Himalaya in the Leh Range and at the base of Nanga Parbat. These two routes circumnavigate the entire Central Karakorum, converging in the upper Hunza area before threading the Hindu Kush and Afghan Wakhan into the Pamir. It moves northward through Tajikistan via the Central Pamir and the Fedchenko Glacier, then into Kyrgyzstan's Turkestan. There it undertakes a full spiral around the entirety of the country before concluding at the foot of Khan Tengri - the world's northernmost 7000m peak, and the nexus of the Tien Shan.
Perhaps one day it will grow to encompass all 12 of the countries that harbor active Snow Leopard populations.
We have been preparing the trail for public release since 2019 through a series of independent expeditions. Both a high-route (with glacier & mountaineering components) and a low route (that circumvents these) are under development. Through these scouting campaigns we’ve amassed a pool of practical resources that future trekkers may call upon to facilitate smoother experiences - notes on topics like river crossings, path choices, seasonality, trail conditions, water sources, accommodation, resupply options, and much more. When finalized, it will be the highest and most committing thru-hike in the world.
Preparing this thru-hike has been blissful and devastating. Over the intervening years I've found myself swimming swollen rivers, navigating the fissured labyrinth of the Fedchenko Glacier, bushwhacking for days on end through overhead thorn, scrambling over dunes of moraine. In due turn I've relished a life enriched by innumerable acts of kindness and encounters with the sublimity of great landscapes. Hopefully, those who follow will endure less disaster and more beauty, but there is no telling out there in the wildernesses of the world’s greatest ranges.
The route has been meticulously crafted to seek out the wildest and most spectacular passages possible. Contrary to the pragmatic A to B character of many thru-hikes, the method which governs the SLT lends itself to a path that meanders like the oxbowing of a river - a trail that flows with a certain circumambulatory reverie. As anthropogenic factors reshape wildness, the SLT will change its course as needed. Trekkers of this route are invited to probe the deepest and least-understood regions of those countries through which it is drawn. The hope, then, is that these places will remain just this way: wild.
Like the eponymous snow leopards from whom this route derives its inspiration, the trail is committed, perhaps relegated, to the highest attainable ground. In an increasingly human world, it is imperative we continually renew our sense of wonder within that world. When wonder falters, such places as the High Himalaya or the Tien Shan Plateau are left doubly vulnerable to exploitation. When wonder dies altogether, the dependent communities, the snow leopard, and the trail all simultaneously cease to be.
After all this time, not onhave I glimpsed the elusive snow leopard. But they are out there. That unattainability, that sensation that something is just around the next corner, is a guiding principle behind this project. We who wander in this manner are but curious bears that have gone over the mountain, just to have a look - conscripts of our own curiosities.
