Video: skiers encounter snow leopard

quote:

---

While leading a group of skiers through delectably deep snow in northern India—the region’s unique “curry powder”—backcountry ski guide David Marchi nearly collided with one of the rarest of the big cats, a snow leopard. Fortunately, the next skier, Australian Owen Lansbury, had a video camera mounted on his helmet and captured the scene moments later, after Marchi had stopped a few hundred feet below the leopard. As the other skiers in the group gathered on the slope above, the seldom seen cat lay motionless for several seconds before bursting into tail-whipping action and bounding down the slope in the general direction of the waiting Marchi. As Marchi quickly slid in the opposite direction, the feline veered into the forest and disappeared from sight, leaving the skiers to whoop and cheer and finish their run with an extra burst of leopard-fueled adrenaline.

---