Sheregesh ski resort isn’t well known outside Russia, but for 30 years the resort in the foothills of Siberia’s Altai mountain range has been a leading destination for Russia’s snow fans thanks to reliable snowfall and challenging slopes.
Every weekend skiers arrive in special trains organized by the Trans-Siberian Railway as well as in buses from Novosibirsk and other cities in the surrounding area. On peak days, up to 12,000 skiers can be found enjoying the slopes.
But the rapidly expanding resort was not making any friends with its aged, inadequate Soviet-era lift infrastructure. That has all changed with the installation of Russia’s first combined chairlift/gondola lift by Doppelmayr.
The lift gives skiers and boarders the option of keeping their skis or board on and taking one of the six-seater chairs for rapid loading and off-loading on to the snow to clock up maximum piste kilometres, or having a sheltered ascent in an eight-passenger gondola cabin, particularly appealing for those who like a break from temperatures that regularly drop to minus 20 Celcius.