Vice Minister of Culture and Sports Yerzhan Yerkinbayev shared details of a project to turn Kazakhstan into a popular destination for winter sports, QazMonitor reports citing Kazinform.
The vice minister remarked that Almaty and the Eastern regions have all the climatic and infrastructural advantages for the development of ski tourism. Those advantages include dry snow, a long winter season, and plenty of sunny days.
“The city council is serious about developing the ski infrastructure,” the vice minister said.
"The project should connect Talgar and Butakovskoye gorges with ropeways and ski slopes. We hired experts and studied the neighboring gorges. By building several lifts there, you can get an additional 70 km of ski slopes for skiing and snowboarding. It is possible to go down from Shymbulak along the gorges to Medeu," he continued.
Finding investment for the project was named the primary obstacle in the project. Although the area belongs to the state, the ministry says it relies on businesses to show initiative. According to the vice minister, entrepreneurs are shying away due to the maintenance cost of the ski lifts.
There is also the problem of where to build the resorts.
“Some of the lands are located in the territory of the national park and are off-limits. We are looking for areas that are suitable for the development of tourism as well as the expansion of skiing areas.”
Information that the mountain resorts near Almaty will be connected by a cableway circulated back in 2018. Then the Ministry of Culture reported it was planning to develop ski tourism by breaking it down into three clusters: Eastern - Turgen mountains, Central - Almaty city, and Western - Kaskelen mountains.
The three clusters will contain 7-10 resorts with the 250-km long ski tracks and an hourly capacity of up to 50 thousand people.
