Heavy rain in the Gobi desert

Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project.  These are his adventures…

Considering that we are at the border to the Gobi desert I must say that it rained quite heavily the night after we caught Aztai so yesterday, we had to check all our traps to make sure that the cloth that covers the hole and the trigger for the trap hadn’t sunken in. Apparently, the dirt that covers the cloth and the snare (a metal wire) can also “cement together” and slow the snare down thereby enabling the animal to pull it’s foot out of the snare before it closes. Hmm, there’s a whole lot of new terms in this field that I’m not really familiar with. I have never tried to explain trapping in English before.

Anyway, Namshur and I went to check some of the traps and Tom and Chris did the others. Nothing much happened except that we got a bit lost trying to take a short-cut through a pass. I was a little weak after my illness but not too bad.

Kim, Pujii and Pursee have been away for a couple of days to finish the last site-occupancy surveys (they walk defined paths searching for snow leopard signs such as scrapes, scats, pug marks). Pujii’ will use this data for her Master’s thesis when she gets back to U.S.

Compared to the first week, the past days have been quite slow, I have gone through all equipment in the camp to see what we have, checked the medical kit together with Chris and re-arranged and added some things to the capture kit. Among other things, it now contains a flashlight and a leatherman tool kit. I usually carry my multi-tool but it’s hard to remember everything in the mornings and considering my physical situation in the last capture it seems as if I can’t choose when we catch the cats and I figure that next time I will be in the shower or something and turn up in underwear with no equipment at all. 

Speaking of the shower, I just had one and I can’t praise it enough. I have promised Namshur a gold medal in shower building (a little Olympic influenced). We have a solar heated shower that contains 9L of water, if left outside for five hours, the water is hot and the bag contains enough for two people to get thoroughly clean. I have my doubts about the shower in winter, there is an apparent risk that my feet might freeze to the rocks. Well, that will be a later problem.

Tom, Pujii, Pursee, Chris and Biamba left the camp this morning. Orjan says it feels a bit empty. Mije, Oyuna, Kim and Namshur are still there, but soon Kim will leave and Orjan will be in charge.