Amirsoy, Uzbekistan, Feb. 20-22, 2025

[Tony Crocker]

Apologies for incomplete pics. It's late, and I've done the write -up for all 3 days but only gone through pics for the third one.

Back in November we finally were admitted from the waitlist for the Feb. 1-12 Wilderness Travel trip to India https://www.wildernesstravel.com/trip/india-kumbh-mela-festival-guided-tour/

So naturally going halfway around the world Liz and I considered what we should add on. The obvious was the Golden Triangle of Delhi/Agra/Jaipur. As we were giving up some of prime ski season, I looked at ski options.

Matt Appleford’s Adventure Project https://www.theadventureproject.net/ has been going to Gulmarg in India for some time. I was not keen on that destination because reading his reports it seems rare that they get to ski the big lines due to avalanche exposure and minimal control work by the ski area. More recently he has had two trips to Uzbekistan, operating out of three lift served areas with some sidecountry touring. Central Asian snowpack is inherently dangerous, probably even more so than in Colorado, but the Uzbek terrain is mellower than Gulmarg so there are lots of options to go off piste while “keeping it under 30 degrees.” Matt is extremely safety conscious and includes at least the equivalent of an Avy 1 course in avalanche education on most of his tours.

Uzbekistan is also the cultural capital of “The Stans,” so we found a local tour company for 6 days in Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent covering the time between the Wilderness Travel and Adventure Project tours.

Matt has had an unlucky 2025 season for snow. He spent 11 days in Hokkaido with zero new snow and arrived in Uzbekistan to a 50% snowpack per guide Ilya with marginal coverage at low elevation.

So we have been at Amirsoy, the highest resort opened in 2019, for the time being.

There is a transport gondola from parking to the base of skiing at about 5,600 feet (Google Earth) with a second gondola up to 7,500 feet and a mid-station at 6,300. There is very limited snowmaking around the 5,600 foot base.

We took one warmup run on Tango to the mid-station, firm in the morning with a few thin spots. So we next started touring along the skier’s left ridgeline.

This was slow going as Liz and were very rusty on AT gear. Liz’ last AT was the Schwarztor in Zermatt in 2014, and since then I’ve had one uphill to El Collar in Las Lenas in 2015, two 15 minute skins in Val d’isere in 2018 and the two COVID tours at Mt. High and Mt. Waterman in April 2020. The only times I’ve toured on my DPS powder skis were Val d’Isere and Mt. High and both of those were in alpine boots with no walk mode. My 2021 Lange XT3’s have a walk mode but Liz is in alpine boots.

So tips from Matt and local guide Ilya were much appreciated. And then there was my slow climbing. Rule of thumb was that I would take close to double the time that Matt, Ilya and younger/more fit clients would on their own. So on this first run we stopped just short of this knoll with a tree, where there was the first fall line of sheltered settled powder.

Pic

A good feature of Central Asia’s Colorado-like snow is the low density, so if unaffected by wind or sun it stays powdery for a long time. High temps before we arrive were freezing or below but during our 3 days it warmed up to the low 40’s F. So each day it became progressively more challenging to find sheltered north facing aspects without tracks.

So this first sidecountry run Thursday was certainly high quality.

Pics

There’s a summer road that leads back into the inbounds. It has a few short step ups but is mostly a traverse, taking us 15-20 minutes.

The run down to the summer road was about 400 vertical so we put the skins back on for another lap. It was a bit steeper climb than the initial ascent along the ridgeline and I was annoyingly tired after the half hour it took me. As I suspected, in my 70’s I’m probably limited to about an hour of uphill in snow per day.

As advertised Uzbekistan sidecountry skiing is quite non-competitive so Ilya and I put down two more tracks next to our first run.

Pics

We returned to the mid-station, rode to the top and skied Papa to the 5,600 foot base and had a leisurely and tasty Uzbek lunch. It was 3:30 when we finished and so rode the transport gondola down.

Vertical was a modest 6,200 but Liz and I were both worked from the uphill.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Friday warmed up to the low 40’s. With possible cloud predicted for the afternoon, we started touring immediately when we first got to the top of Amirsoy’s gondola. The climb up to that treed knoll seemed much easier than on Thursday. We weren’t fumbling around so much on transitions and Matt advised us to get my upper buckles and power strap as loose as possible and for Liz to leave her top alpine buckles undone.

At this spot Ilya and Matt dug a pit to analyze the snowpack. By pushing in a probe you can test the resistance. The probe reached the ground at about 90cm and the softest (weakest) layer was about 15cm at the very bottom.

Next they cut a block, digging out the sides, then using a string to cut a slit in the back. Usually cut blocks are square but they made it twice as wide to see if a release on one half would propagate to the other half.

The stability test uses a shovel tapped 10x each in 3 ways: first a light tap from the wrist, next a medium tap from the elbow, and finally a firm hit from the shoulder. The block did not release from any of these.

Next Matt inserted a shovel down the back previously cut by the string. This time the entire block leaned forward in one piece. Liz is in the pit with the block, which Matt and Ilya estimated weighed 200kg.

With the warming weather I decided it was worth a shot at the steeper north facing line for the peak in front of us as its snow would clearly not improve with each warm day. I had some concern I would poop out on the climb, but Ilya set a clean skin track and the higher riser setting on my Look plate binding worked just fine.

My other AT skis have Marker Barons with 3 settings and the highest one is not stable. Liz got this pic of us on the peak.

The third person is a female snowboarder from the Czech Republic.

I took lots of pics from the peak. Snow was generally excellent on that north face though I had to adjust for a couple of irregularities and so stopped for a short rest. Once I got down to the summer road I took pics of Ilya’s descent.

Pics

View of our tracks down the shaded fall line from the peak.

Mine are looker's left, Ily'as looker's right. The one in the middle is from Ilya 4 days prior.

Traversing a bit we set up to see Matt and Liz descend a ridge in front of us.

Pics.

After the slog out we rode from mid-station to the top to check out the facilities there. Liz liked this “Airstream” restaurant on top.

We split a pizza there. Liz wanted gluhwein, which they did not have but she enjoyed their grog. Ilya and I skied the only isolated top to bottom piste, Charlie. Ilya thought it might be icy but it was not by manmade standards and overall was better than other pistes due to less traffic. 4,800 vertical.

 

[Tony Crocker]

On Saturday there was a weekend influx, Ilya guessed 3x as many people though most are sightseers. That’s the primary clientele both winter and summer. The whole area is a construction zone of hotels and tourist facilities.

To get a different overview of Amirsoy sidecountry we headed out the skier’s right ridgeline. This was narrow and partly melt/frozen so Liz did not like the exposure and took a pass. This route was not with skins but mostly a traverse with a few short bootpacks, a familiar scenario for me if not for Liz.

After 5-10 minutes there are some short lines where you would have another 10 minute traverse back into the ski area, but that area had a few tracks.

It was worth it to me to go farther out just to see what was there even though I knew the exit would be taxing.

I took a few pics while Matt and Ilya discussed the ski plan.

View back of our route along the ridge:

Zoom view of currently closed top of Baldersay ski area and white weather observatory:

View down:

We would ski the line just out of view here.

The north facing line was similar to pitch and length as the one Ilya and I had skied Friday, though sun crust if you strayed from it was more evident during the third warm day. Ilya led skier’s left here.

They let me have the sheltered line down the middle with the softest snow.

I took pics of Matt’s descent skier’s right.

This was a more aesthetic line than mine with the tradeoff of more variable snow.

We continued into the scattered bushes below. View back up from just below tree line:

I followed Ilya closely, resisting the magnet of soft snow skier’s right ending in a sharp V-shaped gully.

We stopped where two of the sharp gullies converged as Ilya knew there was a skin track out from that point.

The initial pitch was steep but I was comfortable using the risers and managed a couple of kick turns OK. Eventually the skin track became more difficult so Ilya set a new one.

Nonetheless it was more work with sidehill topography and snow softening in the blazing sun.

I recalled from Mt. Shasta that sometimes I need to roll my downhill knee outward to keep the downhill skin surface planted firmly on the snow.

We ended up about halfway down the Charlie trail. The skin out took me 55 minutes but for more fit backcountry skiers expect about half an hour. Also if I had been in better shape I would have accepted their offer to take another lap on the short sidecountry run we bypassed the first time.

We met Liz for lunch at the same place we ate Thursday. View up gondola with tubing park at right:

View riding the gondola down to 5,600 foot base, with hotel, parking and ice rink with Christmas tree.

At the top we met Kseniya, who guided Matt on his first Uzbekistan trip in 2022.

We all took a run on Charlie. Here’s a view of the easily accessible off piste between Charlie and the gondola.

We did not venture in there due to the snow being old and tracked out.

Lower down on Charlie:

I had skied 5,500 before we downloaded to the parking.