Handpicked experience · Almaty
Almaty, Kazakhstan
An ice rink so high that skaters called it a record factory, sitting below a dam that was built by blowing up a mountain and then proved itself in 1973.
An oval that rewrote the speed-skating record books
A dam created by deliberately collapsing a mountainside
A staircase locals treat as a gym
Two thousand metres of ascent inside a morning
Mountains that start where the city stops
Four hours from Almaty up into the gorge behind the city: the high-altitude skating rink at Medeu, the mudflow dam above it, and a cable-car ascent to the ski resort at Shymbulak, with a vehicle and driver throughout.
Medeu opened in 1972 and remains the highest large skating oval in the world, sitting at around 1,700 metres in a mountain gorge.
Altitude is an advantage in speed skating: thinner air means less drag on a body moving at forty kilometres an hour. Combine that with ice frozen from clean mountain water and you get a surface that produced world records in absurd numbers — well over a hundred were set here, to the point that skaters spoke of the place as a record factory. Some of the marks stood for years after other rinks moved indoors.
The oval is still in use, and in winter you can skate on it yourself.
Look up the valley from the rink and you see a wall of rock across the gorge. That is not a landform. It was built in 1966 and 1967 by detonating explosive charges in the mountainside and dropping several million cubic metres of rock into the gap.
The reason was mudflows. Meltwater and unstable moraine at the head of the valley periodically send a wall of rock, ice and debris down the gorge, straight at a city of well over a million people. In 1973 exactly that happened: a vast flow came down and hit the new dam, which held it and impounded a lake behind it that then had to be pumped out over months. The city below owes its existence in its present form to a piece of civil engineering built by blowing up a mountain.
There is a staircase up the face — several hundred steps — and locals run it for exercise.
The gondola from Medeu climbs to the resort base, and lifts continue higher towards the pass above it. In a single morning you can go from roughly eight hundred metres in Almaty to over three thousand.
That is a genuine altitude change and it is worth respecting. Take the upper stations slowly, and expect the temperature to drop sharply and the weather to be doing something entirely different from what it was doing in the city when you left.
Cable car tickets and any entry at the rink are arranged on site and are not part of the tour arrangement, so bring local currency.
Wind closes the lifts without warning, and in that case the gorge and the dam are still worth the drive. Snow lies here well into spring, and the upper stations are cold even in summer, so take a proper jacket regardless of what the city is doing. Sun at altitude is much stronger than it feels.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
In 1972, in a gorge behind the city, and it has been in continuous use since.
Thinner air at altitude means less drag on a skater at speed, and the ice was frozen from clean mountain water. Well over a hundred world records fell here.
In winter, yes. The oval is still a working rink rather than a monument.
A mudflow dam, built in 1966 and 1967 by detonating charges in the mountainside and dropping millions of cubic metres of rock into the gorge.
Large enough that the water impounded behind the barrier formed a lake, which engineers then spent months pumping away.
Several hundred, up the face. Locals run them as a workout, and you are under no obligation to join in.
The gondola reaches the resort base and lifts continue towards the pass above, taking you from roughly eight hundred metres in the city to over three thousand.
Wind shuts them without warning. The gorge, the rink and the dam are still worth the drive on those days.