I visited OQ as part of the Ski Adventure Kazakhstan tour in late January. It was a pretty lean season and in most spots the snow base was way too shallow to attempt any off-piste skiing. Some of the piste were well covered and groomed whilst
a handful of piste weren’t open due to inadequate natural snow and insufficient snow management. This included part of the #1 trail which is a major thoroughfare to drop some fall line off the main chairlift. The various piste on the frontside offered some speedy fun, but having to repeatedly drop the narrow #4 blue trail made the skiing a bit monotonous. On the plus side, the frontside was incredibly quiet with zero lift lines (it was a weekday).

We then headed over to the new Aqtas area via the swanky gondola and the place felt completely deserted. It looked like they’d only opened the area half heartedly, which might have been a symptom or the reason for the lack of crowds. They’d been doing some snowmaking, albeit rather shabbily, and hadn’t bothered to move much of the manmade snow around nor groomed all the slopes, so not all piste were open. The Aqtas area is at higher elevation than the main part of the ski area and even though it has a solar aspect, there was more snow (both natural and manmade) compared to the older zone.

The new 6-pack detachable chairlift was incredibly fancy, but they were running it at a low speed, possibly to save costs, and the time it took just to load the chair was painstakingly slow. After repeating multiple laps of the couple of open runs and feeling rather bored, we went for a hike up the groomed snowmobile trail and dropped an enjoyable off-piste line back down to the chairlift. This zone had the best snow and terrain on the hill, so hopefully they intend to put a chairlift in there in the future. When downloading the gondola, it was hard not to have a powder hound drool over the phenomenal backcountry-type terrain under the gondola which included some steep chutes and tree skiing. If only there’d been enough snow to tackle it!

As part of their half-arsed attempt to open up the new zone, there was no chairlift to return to the main ski area, and the shuttle bus timetable to get back was irregular. Not surprisingly there were a couple of shrewd taxi drivers competing for our business, although thankfully we had private transport to get out of there.

The snow management shortcomings of the ski resort could be considered quaint and part of the Central Asian ski culture. These could have been forgiven if the place was poor, however OQ have put some serious investment into the ski resort infrastructure in the absence of investing adequately in operations management. The place isn’t blessed with an abundance of natural snowfall, and with some good snowmaking and grooming, including pushing some snow around to ensure all piste are open, OQ could become a tenable option for non-beginners.

We stayed down in the city of Almaty which was a nice option to absorb the culture and keep it incredibly affordable.

See the overview of Oi Qaragai for more on our thoughts on the pros and cons of this ski resort, and our ski resort ratings for comparisons to other areas around the world.
See our video here