Marco Polo If You Can

A metallic rapping sounded behind me just as I slid my elbows and knees forward through the snow for the umpteen thousandth time. I turned around and looked at Shoudi, plowing through the crusted snow in my wake. He grinned through ice-encrusted beard and once again tapped a hard-frozen mitten against a rock. I wondered why the mitten didn't shatter.

At this stage, a standard line in a story might be: "It seemed like we'd been crawling for hours." Well, in this case we had been crawling for hours, lots and lots of hours. Shortly after daybreak we had glassed a band of sheep feeding at the head of one of the open valleys typical of Tajikistan's Pamir range. As we watched, the sheep began to drift up into the rocky ridges, where they would bed until late afternoon.

Two rams separated from the group, and even from a distance of miles it was clear these were both what we were looking for. The pair climbed straight up from the valley floor, crossed a secondary ridge and bedded on the spine of a major ridge separating two drainages. Maybe, just maybe, if we could gain the cover of that secondary ridge we could climb to the top. And maybe, just maybe, we might have a shot from the crest. I figured we were at least three miles away, with absolutely no cover. It would be a long crawl.

We started at about 8:30 in the morning, all in snow camouflage: Attobek in the lead, Shoudi in the rear, me sandwiched between these two great Tajik sheep hunters. That way I couldn't fall behind, couldn't stand up without getting slapped down, and I couldn't even complain because between their Sheep Hunter English 101 and my Sheep Hunter Russian 101, any whining would be lost in translation.

We crawled on mitten-covered hands--forward maybe a foot, slide each knee forward, do it again. And the hours passed. At 3:30, in the shelter of the intervening ridge, Attobek stood up and motioned for me to do the same, grinning and doing much-needed stretching exercises right there in the snow. We shared a silent laugh and a mutual thumbs-up. So far, so good. And then we started up the ridge.

It had been minus 22 degrees when we left camp. I suppose it had warmed a bit through the day, but now it was starting to get colder again, fast.

From a distance, the secondary ridge didn't look like much. Up close, it was big and steep. At 16,000 feet, not even the Tajiks move real fast up in the rocks, although they can go much faster and farther than I can. But we'd been at this for days and were now a team, a team with a mission, and we made the top together, stopping for a breather just below the crest. Shoudi crept forward, spying a cluster of boulders that would offer some cover. As ready as I was likely to be, I crept into place behind him.

Slowly, carefully we peered over the crest. Only a small depression lay on the far side, then the main ridge rose in snowfields and jumbled boulders. Near the top, exactly where they had been all day, lay the two great Marco Polo argalis. In that clear icy air they seemed close enough to touch, but the rangefinder read 700 yards.