A day before my North Kazakhstan mud adventures we had a chance visiting a high mountain ski resort:

Wow does that ever remind me of calgary

Igor, gorgeous photos! Thanks!
Any time to do some skiing?

I hope the cattle experts have rubber boots...tall ones.
Our area is so dry we expect severe water restrictions within 3 - 4 weeks.

Barb

" the American-UK mission of the cattle experts is going to visit this place"
Hahahah Igor you're so funny!

Beautiful mountaintop pictures. In the third ski picture, why are all the tracks ACROSS the hill? I would want to ski DOWN it. But maybe down is out of bounds or nowhere near a lift?

You should ski here too Igor. There is great skiing within two hours of Toronto.

Have a great day!

Great pics Igor, thx for sharing that....i like traveling and see photos around the world 🙂 ...i never went farther then Europe, its still at 6-7 hours flight from here 😉 .....

Ben

beautiful photos! I guess the ground under that mud must be frozen; therefore, the water can't drain yet?

Thanks to everyone for the comments! 😳
Barb and Adam, I'm not skiing 'cos too old and heavy weighty ! At time I had being growing there was no skiing. This sport was so imperialistic one as well as the tennis. There was no chance for Soviet people enjoying these ones.
Adam, perhaps these across the slope tracks are a kind of optical illusion? Or because the slope is too steep?
Jesse, I've never been in the Rockies but from those pictures I've seen they look similar. By the way a spot I took pics at is at about 2700 m above the sea level. It's way higher than the Blue Mountains resort, isn't it, Adam?
Beny, I like visiting Europe too. 6-7 hours flight from here 😉 And costly too, especially London.
Tim, you are right the ground under the mud is a solid frozen. Last winter (2011-2012) minus 57 C was registered there. Nevertheless the North Dakota Angus cattle likes this place very much. And the steaks cooked from these cows are more tasty than I had in Amarillo. 😆

Great photos, Igor! I once saw a ski slope on television which is supposed to be very close to Almaty.

Thanks Cameron, there are a few (only a few) ski resorts around Almaty in spite of a lot of opportunities for development. Almaty has won the Student Winter Game in 2017 so there are a lot of plans to create new facilities for skiing, for bobsledding, for skeleton and etc. Will see...

Very neat Igor! Thanks for the window into an otherwise not very often visited part of the world! Intriguing. i always go on google earth and check your corner of the world out. So cool!!!!

I've never been in the Rockies but from those pictures I've seen they look similar.

Amazing how much it looks like the mountains north of here. 😯

i always go on google earth and check your corner of the world out. So cool!!!!

And I always go on the Google Earth dreaming about Arizona - New Mexico - Texas El Paso area. Yunnan is a next place I'd wish visiting...

Amazing how much it looks like the mountains north of here. 😯

Or yeah! And we have our own big cat there - a snow leopard. Unfortunately the conifers diversity is poor here. One but the World tallest picea shcrenkiana and two species of Juniperus. But we have enormous diversity of wild growing apple trees...