Medeu and Shymbulak

Medeu shut for a full reconstruction in March 2025, and the city gives the last quarter of 2027 for reopening. This is not a maintenance week you can wait out. A reporter who walked the site in September 2026 found the ice field and the stands under construction.

Go anyway. The complex sits at 1,691 metres, the dam above it is one of the largest of its kind anywhere, and the valley behind it is where the walking starts. What the building was — 170 kilometres of pipe under the ice, a State Prize, and a count of world records nobody agrees on — is on the architecture page, which treats it as the piece of engineering it is.

Buses 12 and 21 run to Medeu — the 21 from the Central Stadium, the 12 from the Hotel Kazakhstan stop. A taxi does the same job, and a taxi is what most visitors end up taking. Driving works as well: a closure of the car park was announced for 16 June 2026, but it is open in practice. It is the stretch above Medeu, not Medeu itself, that has stopped working for cars.

Above Medeu the road is restricted too: private traffic on the Medeu–Tuyuksu stretch is limited from 24 July to 30 November 2026, and the resort points walkers at its own Student Trail instead. That is the operator's notice, and it is one of the few pages here that carries a date.

Which leaves the cable car as the way on to Shymbulak, and it is the better way regardless.

The full excursion runs from Medeu up to Shymbulak and on to the Talgar pass at 3,200 metres. Return, for an adult, it is 12,000 ₸ — a figure the administration had to explain in public after people objected to it, which is the clearest confirmation of what the ticket covers that exists.

The upper pair of lifts on their own — Combi-1 and Combi-2, the section above the resort — is 7,000 ₸ return for an adult and 3,000 ₸ for a child, sold at the ticket office. That figure is from the operator's undated tariff page, read on 11 September 2026.

Check the hours for the day you are going. The ticket page shows the lower line running 09:00 to 19:00, Combi-1 to 17:00 and Combi-2 to 16:30, with boarding stopping half an hour before each close — but the only dated notice on their site puts that 19:00 finish in the 25 July to 31 August window. Nothing dated says what September does, so do not plan a late descent on the strength of it.

It runs through the summer: the lifts reopened on 1 May 2026 after maintenance, with horse riding, an alpine park and an archery range at the top of them.

The last confirmed season opened on 6 December 2025 and closed on 12 April 2026. Dates and prices for the coming winter had not been announced when this page was written.

For scale rather than as a price to budget: an adult day pass was 15,500 ₸ through the regular season and 26,000 ₸ over the new year peak, between 25 December and 11 January. The resort confirmed the drop back to regular pricing in mid-January without publishing the figure. Both numbers are last season's. Do not turn up with 15,500 ₸ in your pocket and expect it to be enough.

With the ice gone, this is what I send people up the gorge for. Take the 842 steps above the rink — everyone stops on them, that is not a fitness test — and at the top keep walking up the road to Gorelnik, where Apa Katya has a terrace. Breakfast or lunch, and the best views you will eat a meal in front of anywhere near this city.

This is the first half of my Saturday morning, if you want the rest of the day in order.

The road walk is better this year than it usually is. Private traffic on the stretch above Medeu is restricted until 30 November 2026, so what you are walking up is a mountain road with the cars taken off it — the one upside of a closure that inconveniences everybody else.

Getting into Medeu costs nothing, so on a day when you skip the cable car the only money this asks for is what you eat. Apa Katya stays open through the winter, which makes this a cold-weather morning as much as a summer one. If you still have legs afterwards, Sarysai is the next one up the valley.

The full set of routes out of this gorge — Gorelnik written up properly, and Shymbulak on to Mynzhylky — is on the hikes page, along with the pedestrian cable-car tariff for walking one direction and riding the other.