Quick turn around for blog posts, but I really wanted to post about skiing today! Skiing in Kyrgyzstan is one of those things I reallllly hoped to be able to do, but wasn't positive I could or what it would be like. Yesterday my roommate (I still don't have her name down quite right, I know I'm a terrible person) drove us to pick up one of her friends and we all went to a ski shop. Having no idea what to expect I was very pleasantly surprised by Gergert Sport (www.gergert.kg). If you are ever in Bishkek and want to ski or board, go there. They had a full shop with really nice equipment and ski clothes and a whole separate rental building. Rental gear is never the best, but again, I was pleasantly surprised. I skied in boot and skis by a European company I didn't know.
The skis were a little scratched, but certainly fine and the boots were downright nice. The only thing that was a little funny is that they rent the skis out REALLY short. I practically had to plead to get 152's like I ski at home. This morning we got up early, had a spicy cabbage soup for breakfast and got picked up by one of my roommates classmates. I've seen a quite a few Subaru's here, which does make sense, and he had a Legacy hatchback. There were three guys and we went and picked up my roommates female friend and her little brother. That made seven people. I tried to get one of the guys to take the passenger seat, but no takers. They piled five people into the back seat of the Subaru and my roommate patted me on the shoulder and said “This is Kyrgyzstan!” With that we were off to the mountains! The selection of American music that makes it here is varied and a little odd. We listened to a mix containing “Baby don't hurt me” and “The Selfie Song”. Once outside of the city we pretty quickly hit a gravel road and drove 15km up that on snow and ice.
I'm really ok with not driving in this country. When we got there it was a small parking lot that ended up holding many more cars than I thought it could. We were pretty early, so we parked and started to get ready. An all day lift ticket was 1150 som, about $22 bucks. One of the guys took our money and bought everyone lift tickets. They were the nice ones that look like a credit card you just have to put in your pocket and the lift gates recognize. This was not a very big ski resort, it had three lifts, which all had one main run off of them and than options if you were creative and a decent skier.
The main lift was their green run bunny-hill and was very long! Some nice rollers off to the sides, and wide open, altogether not bad. It snowed several days ago, and as the place is only open on weekends we were the first to ski the new snow. Like back home, Bishkek is having an anomalously warm and dry winter. It's really not that cold and they have way less snow in the mountains than normal. Needless to say, there wasn't a ton of snow, and occasionally some patchy coverage, but the snow that there was was a really nice quality.
About 1 minute into the first run it became apparent that I am a lot better than any of the kids I was skiing with. There were two other skiers in the group, one who had been a few times, and another guy who I think I understood it was his first time. The guy who had been a couple of times was really nice and was trying his damnedest to ask me questions about skiing and improve his skiing. On the easy greens I was really working on nicely edging my turns, which he noticed, but it was so hard trying to explain using gestures what I was doing. The overall average ability level was lower than what I'm used to in the US, but there were certainly a few great skiers and boarders there too.
The Kyrgyz are really starting to embrace skiing, and I think it could be an amazing tourist attraction for them. I heard Russian and Kyrgyz and nothing else all day. Going farther up the hills from the long bunny lift was lift number two.
My first run down it was so so as the top was more shaded, really cold, and I followed the main path which lacked coverage and had the worst snow quality I saw all day. The next run I went on a cat track and dropped down into this totally awesome gully. The gully had concentrated and protected the snow and it was the deepest powder I have ever skied. Totally killer. Even better you broke out the bottom to the skiers right of the main path and no one was really deviating, so you had this hugely long beautifully open run with about 8 inches of powder with no tracks in it. You could just bomb along in it, some of the most fun skiing I've ever done.
I checked out the other short lift too, which had harder blue or some black terrain if you were creative. Short, but a really fun steep bit. Nothing is groomed, so I would definitely want to hit up Karakol (the name of the ski place even though it's not near Karakol) after there has been some new snow and not when it gets super tracked out.
We had hot tea, pickles, cookies, and chocolate for “lunch” and noticed there was a flat tire. Two of the guys (of course...) fixed it while the rest of us went back to the slopes. I'd do a very slow run with the group and than I'd go do several runs by myself. They spent much time taking pictures of each other and selfies and used broken English to try and get me to take selfies as well.
In the afternoon things got interesting at the mini terrain park. There was a 2m high ski jump built and giant inflatable blob at the base of it. After watching tons of people just sail off and crash into the blob, I though “why not” and went for it. I didn't try anything special, just sailed off and landed in the blob. My skis popped off, which seems to be what happened to most people. It was actually fun and the landing was not nearly as jarring as I thought it would be.
Skied till closing time and headed back to the car past all the people BBQ'ing delicious smelling shahlik (shish-kebobs).
We all piled into the car (they still insisted I take the wide open front seat) and drove down the mountains.
An inversion happened, when we left Bishkek is was clear, and we drove down into a white mist and it was much colder.
We were immediately fed more borsh (sp? Russian cabbage soup) and than a pie with mutton, onions, and potatoes for dinner. Pretty hard day to beat!