Winter 2 - Georgia

That's Georgia the country - in the Caucasus. Not the most well known area for ski-mountaineering but an interesting place to visit with plenty of high mountains. A group of four of us travelled to the capital, Tbilisi, just after the major ash shutdown of flights - we were very lucky. From Tbilisi we went straight to Gudauri at 2000m and which is one of the two main ski resorts in Georgia. There are only about 3 functional ski-lifts out of around 8 or more, but then functional is perhaps the wrong word as there was a power cut on our first (warmup) day. So it was skins on from the start to ascend a 3000m peak near the top of the ski area. The weather was very warm and cloudy making the snow very heavy and sticky.

The next day we joined our guide, Gia, and another group of four, from Bavaria. The day was not dissimilar to the previous one but we did set out much earlier and went to a slightly higher and more harder (in terms of kick turns) peak. This was the last day of the lift served skiing and though we did not use lifts we did make use of the bar on the slopes and by this time the sun was shining.

A couple more days of warm up in the local area and then it was time to head north for a two hour drive to a small village and a rough track for our 4WD's up to the snow at 2100m. From here a baking hot skin up to a hut at 3700m. The hut is an old Russian meteorological station which provides basic accommodation but was not exactly tidy. Lots of old batteries and other bits of junk abounded, added to by recently left rubbish about which Gia was not pleased.

Due to time constraints and what looked like a short weather window it was a pre-dawn start the following day for an ascent of our main objective, Mt Kazbek - 5047m. It was a long gradual ascent for most of the way with the skis being left at 4850m part way up a steepening sastrugi slope. Then a steep snow plod took us to the summit. We had some great views on the way up including distant views of Mt Elbrus some 200 km away, though the top itself clouded in a little.

The descent was straightforward but very soggy snow by the time we reached the hut in the early afternoon. The next morning we skied nice spring snow back to our vehicles and returned to Gudauri. We'd been lucky with the weather because by the following morning it was back to cloud and rain so we made for Tbilisi for our final two days and did the touristy things, with plenty of ancient churches to visit.