Almaty, 15 km south
Medeu and Shymbulak
From the city to three thousand metres in under an hour.
One road out of the city climbs past the Medeu skating rink to the Shymbulak resort, and a gondola carries on from there to the Talgar pass. You can be drinking coffee downtown at nine and standing in snow at three thousand two hundred metres by eleven. Nowhere else near Almaty gives you that.
Medeu
The highest Olympic-size skating rink in the world, built in 1972 in a gorge at 1,691 metres. Even out of season it is worth the stop: the dam above it was raised to hold back mudflows, and the staircase up its face is 842 steps if you feel like counting.
Shymbulak and the pass
The resort sits at 2,260 metres among spruce. Three gondola sections climb from there to the Talgar pass at 3,200 metres, where the snow lasts into summer and the air is thin enough to notice. There are terraces at every level, so nobody has to go higher than they want to.
What to bring
Warm clothing, whatever the city thermometer says. It is routinely twenty degrees colder at the top than at your hotel, and the wind on the pass makes it colder still. Sunglasses matter more than you would expect: snow at that altitude is blinding.
Tours that go here
Prices are per group, not per person, and include the guide, the driver and the car.