Andy Snider, Fresno Chaffee Zoo's director of animal care and conservation, is in Armenia to tag and track Armenian vipers. Snider is a nationally known expert on reptiles and amphibians. Snider is in Armenia until Sept. 10 and is sharing his experiences with readers of The Bee.

Andy's Armenia Adventure
Part 6, 1-4 September 2008

I learned, or rather relearned, two important lessons during our recent adventure in the southern region of Armenia, just north of the border with Iran. Lesson 1 -- Always check your camping gear before you leave home. Lesson 2 -- Always bring a snake bag with you in the field, even if you don't plan on finding anything. Let me explain.

We found out we were going to be camping in the mountains of the Mehgri range for three nights instead of two as we had expected. No problem there ... Jeff and I love to camp, and Matt, although he's never camped before, was very eager for the experience. So, after the six-or-so hour drive to the Shikahogh reserve, we met up with the rangers that were going to drive us the further 1 1/2 hours into the mountains where we typically camp to look for the special dark phase of the Armenian viper. Since we'd never been here at this time of the year before, we weren't quite sure what to expect weather-wise (or anything-wise, really).

Alic, an incredible naturalist from World Wildlife Fund who studies Persian leopards, markhor, and other species throughout the country, accompanied us, as he has for many of our forays into the wilds of Armenia. This guy is part mountain goat, I believe ... he can scale mountains quicker than anyone I've seen, with a full pack on his back and a smile on his face. So, after the incredible experience of driving a 1960's Soviet-era van up a mountainside on a dirt track barely wide enough to support a vehicle, with one side of the van a sheer clip going UP and the other side going DOWN, we got to our usual campsite.

The campsite is at an elevation of around 7,000 feet, so it's an incredible view from up there. The mountains in the not-too-distant area are the mountains of Iran, where the river Arax separates the two countries.

We arrived in the late afternoon and made camp, clouds and fog moving up the valley all around the campsite. Chilly, to be sure, but not too bad -- until the rain. After getting some water from the local springs (local meaning about 3/4 of a mile from camp) and having a quick bite to eat, we retired to our tents.

This is where I should mention about checking your gear before leaving home. My tent stakes were quite bent, from the last visit to this campsite, and the wind was breezy. The ground is quite hard, making the stakes difficult at best to place anyway. Then there was the sleeping bag. I had forgotten (again, the last time I camped in this area) that I had broken the zipper to the sleeping bag the last time it was used, so it couldn't be zipped up. So, while the rain and the mist found its way under the tent fly, making for a fairly soggy evening, I chilled, quite literally during the night, and found a puddle we dubbed "Lake Snider" inside the tent the next morning.

The clouds never lifted the next day, making viper hunting more of a challenge. Alic, the incredible naturalist that he is, found four, while Jeff was the only other lucky one with a single individual. After a very soggy day, we had some dinner (the usual tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, lavash, bread, and some tinned sardines) and retired to bed. The night was OK -- very little wind, no rain, and the temperature wasn't too bad. Most of us slept better that night.

The second full day was glorious -- the sun was out, the temperatures climbed high enough that a coat wasn't necessary, and the lower valleys were full of clouds, making for a spectacular view. The herp hunting was better too -- Alic bagged two more vipers, Jeff caught one more, and I was lucky enough to capture one beautiful black female viper as well as a blotched ratsnake and a huge female green toad.

This is where lesson 2 comes in -- I found the female viper under a rock when I wasn't planning on really looking for snakes, so I had no bag in which to put the snake. Luckily, Matt was close enough to hear my shouts of "Somebody bring me a bag!!"

We processed the vipers (processing consists of weighing, measuring, and implanting PIT [Passive Integrated Transponders] tags for identification purposes), took some pictures of the ratsnake and toad, and had a lovely dinner. Then the bad stuff happened.

The weather took a turn for the worse, and the wind started whipping to gail force. My tent threatened several times to fly away entirely. The black clouds started pouring in from Iran -- it was then that we decided to retire to our tents. Inside the tent, I laid there while the tent came down to within 18 inches of my face and rain whipped everything around us. It was truly awesome! Trying to read by my little Coleman lantern wasn't worth it, so I took some Tylenol PM to help with the headache and attempt some sleep at the same time. Sometime around midnight or a little afterward, I finally managed to get some sleep, no thanks to my zipperless sleeping bag.

We awoke this morning to another totally cloudy, fogged-in day. They came and picked us up in the same Soviet van for the experience of going down the mountain in the fog on that same tiny dirt track. After another seven or eight hours of driving, we're back in our 86-degree "flat" in Yerevan, having taken a shower (lovely, by the way), and back at the internet cafe.

Oh, and by the way, one of my "minor" lessons for this trip was that a 6-hour-plus taxi ride in Armenia costs right around $100 U.S. Try THAT in America! :-)