Oi Qaragai Ski Resort
Oi Qaragai Ski Resort includes a few sections:
- Frontside which has 2 sub-sections above the bases at Aport Plaza and Panorama Plaza
- Backside which drops down to the Lesnaya Skazka village
- Aqtas is a separate section that opened for the 2025/26 season
The frontside and backside are inter-connected via the A and B chairlifts that take you to the top of a ridge that separates the areas. The connection with the Aqtas area is a little more clunky. You can ski there via the narrow cat track # 6, unclick and walk across the road to the gondola station that takes you from 1,526 metres elevation up to the Aqtas ski area. To return you’ll need to download the gondola, unless there’s lots of snow and you have well honed backcountry skills to ski under the gondola. From the base of the gondola there are shuttles to get you back to Lesnaya Skazka or the Aport Plaza, but they only go every 55 minutes, so there might be taxis waiting there vying for your business.
Lifts
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Oi Qaragai Mountain Resort has 13 lifts, which in addition to many surface lifts, includes 3 old chair lifts, the access gondola to/from Aqtas (which is open to pedestrians), and the 6-pack hooded chair lift. When we visited, they had this detachable chair lift running at a snail’s pace.
Oi Qaragai offers night skiing a couple of nights of week off the A quad chair, so a few decent runs are illuminated. The night skiing offers some nice views down to Almaty.
Lift Tickets
Lift passes are slightly cheaper than those of Shymbulak, although if your home currency is strong, you’ll find the lift tickets incredibly cheap, especially compared to the USA ski resorts.
OQ Snow
Southern Kazakhstan doesn’t get severe winters relative to the northeast in the Altai, so the snow season is generally not as long. Whilst much of Kazakhstan is arid, the Tian Shan Mountains are thought to receive a decent amount of precipitation although data regarding snow volumes is not readily available. It’s also not well documented what impact the shrinking lake that is the Caspian Sea is having on the amount of snow received by Oi Qaragai or other Almaty ski resorts.
Looking at precipitation stats down in the city, it’s likely that OQ ski resort doesn’t get a lot of snow. Thankfully there are snowmaking capabilities to supplement natural snowfall. This is particularly key in the new Aqtas area where the aspect isn’t ideal for snow retention.
Beginner Skiing Oi Qaragai
The Ride School has a separate area for learning that’s serviced by dedicated surface lifts. Otherwise the C lift and surface D lift are good spots for novices. For other beginners, the mountain provides lots of options because the majority of trails are rated as blue (beginner). One limitation is the narrow tracks that are used as thoroughfares by faster skiers and riders, which can be terrifying for both the beginner and advanced skiers.
The Aqtas area has a few blue runs that aren’t fully serviced by the fancy chair lift and require a slow jaunt up via a handle tow lift. That would get pretty annoying after a couple of repetitions, and hopefully there are plans to install another chair lift in the area.
For the Intermediate
The frontside and backside have a handful of intermediate piste, although the sections that drop the fall line are short and most runs start and finish with a mellow blue slope. The Aqtas area has a couple of red runs, and they also offer very little vertical with decent pitch.
Terrain Park
Sometimes Oi Qaragai has a small terrain park with jumps including an airbag.
Advanced Skiing On-Piste
OQ Ski Resort has 4.5 black runs (part of 1, 12,18, 19, 24) and they only cover a small part of the vertical so they’re super short. There’s also the potential that the runs are not open due to inadequate snow, and they are not groomed to retain the snow that they do have.
Off Piste Skiing and Riding
OQ has some short but sweet off-piste terrain, yet this is very contingent on there being adequate snow cover, particularly on the frontside which is somewhat rocky. The frontside has off-piste plus a little sidecountry that is lightly vegetated, whilst the backside is covered with evergreens that are perfectly spaced for some good tree skiing.
The Aqtas zone has mellow open off-piste under and beside the chairlift, and whilst it’s at higher elevation, the aspect is sunny so the snow conditions may not be ideal for off-piste riding. Far lookers’ left is a groomed trail that heads up and you can then drop via the trees or open zones down to the chairlift. You can hike up or you might be able to get a snowmobile ride up the trail.