Why Georgia is the ultimate ski destination for thrillseekers

Driving up the snowbound dirt road to Tetnuldi ski area in Georgia’s Caucasus Mountains is like taking your 4WD vehicle back in time. Our base in the town of Mestia could easily have come straight out of a Game of Thrones set, with its ancient stone buildings and Svan towers – defensive structures that date back as far as the 12th or 13th centuries – giving a medieval feel to the place. Yet Tetnuldi ski resort, 15km to the east, is at the forefront of the modern freeride scene in Georgia.

However, you’ve got to like travelling to get here. The four-hour flight from London to Tbilisi is no big deal, but if the short connecting flight to Mestia isn’t operating – as is often the case given the region’s wild mountain weather – you’re looking at an eight-hour drive. At least it’s scenic, taking you above inaccessible river gorges, through deep forests that are home to bears, wolves and lynx and beneath savagely steep mountains that are higher than anything in the Alps.

The potholed dirt road to Tetnuldi adds another half-hour to the journey, but when you eventually get there, you’ll be glad you made the effort if deep powder, fantastic mountain panoramas and empty slopes are your idea of a good time.

Despite having only four chairlifts, Tetnuldi offers some of the wildest and quietest skiing in Europe. That said, you’d get bored pretty quickly if you stuck to the modest collection of blue, red and black runs beneath the lifts, but the terrain off the side, which is forested on the lower slopes, is a freerider’s dream, and there are 900 vertical metres of it from the resort’s high point of 3,160m in the shadow of 4,858m Mount Tetnuldi.

Most visitors to Tetnuldi come from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands at the moment, but their numbers and those of the locals are so low that lift queues are unheard of. And Tetnuldi is not the only ski resort in the area – directly above Mestia is the dinky little ski hill of Hatsvali. One chairlift takes you from the town to the base station, and a second carries you up to the 2,348m summit of Mount Zuruldi – and that’s your lot.

open image in gallery

A handful of well-groomed pistes and the option of tree skiing off the side will keep you busy for a day at most, but Hatsvali is well worth a visit if only for the dramatic views of 4690-metre Mount Ushba – its pointy twin peaks allow the locals with some justification to call it the “Matterhorn of Georgia”. And the skiing comes at a bargain price: a two-day “multipass” for both resorts costs just £22.

You’ll have to head back into Mestia for your après-ski action, which is limited to lively bars and restaurants serving such renowned Georgian dishes as khachapuri (a kind of Georgian pizza) and khinkali (meat, cheese or vegetable dumplings eaten by hand) along with superb Georgian wines, and you’ll be hard pushed to pay more than £15 for a slap-up meal with drinks, while beer comes in at less than £1 a litre.

If Tetnuldi is, say, the Chamonix of Georgia with its wild mountain landscapes and freeride scene, then the country’s biggest resort, Gudauri, is maybe Georgia’s answer to Les Arcs – albeit on a much smaller scale. By this I mean it offers something for everyone, and it’s easy to get to, being less than two hours from Tbilisi.

With some 14 lifts, many installed in the last few years, almost 60km of pistes, 1,200m of vertical, endless off-piste opportunities and even heli-skiing for the minted (€750 (£655) per person for seven drops), Gudauri is a serious challenger to budget eastern European resorts like Bansko in Bulgaria, which is a similar size.

open image in gallery

Lift passes cost just €14 per day or £75 per week, and most of the runs are wide, open intermediate cruisers, while the big snowfields between them provide easily accessible and unchallenging off-piste that doesn’t get tracked out too quickly, and there are six freeride areas offering steeper slopes for more advanced skiers.

Another feather in the cap for Gudauri is the close proximity to Tbilisi – a stopover here is a must. The city’s buzzing nightlife, rich cultural heritage and architectural influences from Persian and Art Nouveau to Soviet-era and modern shouldn’t be missed.

open image in gallery

And talking of modern, Georgia also has the newest ski resort in Europe, Goderdzi, which lies 1,724m up in the Lower Caucasus.

The resort opened in 2015 – and it shows. Despite two brand new ski lifts taking you up to 2,364m, the resort has limited accommodation simply because the hotels are still being built, and the road to the resort – well, unless you have a rugged 4WD vehicle forget it, especially in heavy snow.

In theory, Goderdzi is only a two-hour drive from the cosmopolitan Black Sea city of Batumi, but until the final 20km or so of the road is surfaced (a priority, I was told) you’re unlikely to get there in less than three hours, if at all in bad weather.

This does have some advantages for more adventurous skiers – we literally had the resort to ourselves when we skied there in bright spring sunshine (lift passes £7 per day/ £37 per week), which made the morning of off-piste cat skiing that we enjoyed (£70 per person per hour/£280 per day) almost unnecessary as the resort was almost as quiet the backcountry (note that you’ll be standing on a platform on the back of the snowcat rather than riding in a cab, so luxurious it is not).

At present, Goderdzi remains a destination to look out for in the future, especially if you like the idea of skiing and frolicking on a beach on the same trip; Mestia’s resorts, particularly Tetnuldi, will appeal to anyone looking for adventure and endless backcountry, and Gudauri – well, that should be on the bucket list of pretty much any skier looking for great skiing, good value and a ski experience quite unlike anything in the Alps.

Flights from London Gatwick to Tbilisi start from £301 return with Georgian Airways. Internal flights to Mestia start from 65GEL (approx £18) with Vanilla Sky.

From 2020, package ski deals to Georgia are available from €2,100 pp (flights not included) with Mountain Heaven.