The Putorana plateau

The view was magnificent—mile after mile of flat-topped mountains receding to the Artic horizon—though it was difficult to appreciate if you were on your hands and knees on the side of one of those plateaus, clinging to shards of scree. Vasily Sarana, the 33-year-old chief of the Russian Geographic Society's Putorana expedition and a mountaineer who seemed capable of bounding up vertical walls, was not in such an undignified position, however. Standing tall, he turned around on the vertiginous slope and scanned the horizon of his favorite corner of Russia—the Putorana Plateau, a wild, uninhabited tableland the size of Nevada, cut by canyons, rivers, and waterfalls. We were 200 miles (322 kilometers) north of the Arctic Circle in early September. Snow had fallen in the night, throwing into sharp relief the striated flanks of nearby plateaus.

"Winter has arrived," said Sarana, and, bracing against the frigid wind and spitting snow, I had to agree. "The moose and wolves will live in the valley now, but the sheep will stay up here. It will be a real battle for survival." The Putorana sheep spend the winter on the plateau tops, where high winds sweep away the snow, exposing grass and other plant food.