Ski & Winter in Armenia

It is 9:00 am at the bottom station of the Tsaghkadzor cable car. The five-stage Italian Leitner chairlift system whirs into motion above your head. Fresh overnight snow has blanketed Mount Teghenis, the 2,819 m volcanic peak that hosts the country's biggest ski resort. Twelve minutes and four chairlift transfers later you are standing in cold thin air on the summit, looking west across the white Aragats massif and south to the gleaming twin peaks of Mount Ararat in the distance. Below your skis: 30 km of mostly Italian-cut groomed pistes dropping back through the larch forest to the village. Behind you in the snow, an Armenian father is teaching his small son to snowplough on a 200 m beginner lift. There is no queue at any of the chairs. You drop in, find your edges, and ski your way back through the morning trees.

Armenia is not the Alps, but it is one of the most underrated and affordable winter destinations in the wider Caucasus region. The country has two organised ski areas: Tsaghkadzor (the big one — 30 km of pistes, 7 modern Leitner chairlifts, 1,840 m base to 2,819 m summit, 60 km from Yerevan and reachable by airport transfer in 90 minutes), and Jermuk (smaller, 3 km of pistes, 1 chairlift, 2,100 m base to 2,438 m summit, attached to the country's historic spa town in Vayots Dzor). The Soviet Union built Tsaghkadzor in 1967 as a training centre for its Olympic skiers and the old Soviet infrastructure was completely replaced with Italian Leitner detachable chairlifts and modern slope grooming between 2004 and 2008.

Prices remain remarkably cheap by European standards. A single full-day adult ski pass at Tsaghkadzor is currently $33 (around a tenth of an Alpine equivalent), a 3-day pass $81, a 7-day pass $171. Ski rental runs around $14 per hour, snowboard rental $19 per hour. The season is broadly mid-November to late March (with a reliable powder window from late December to mid-February). Add in the snow-covered medieval monasteries of Sevanavank, Goshavank and Haghartsin, ice fishing on partly frozen Lake Sevan, mineral spa hotels at Jermuk where you can ski for half a day and then sit in a 53°C thermal pool, and the result is a quietly excellent and very affordable winter destination.

Tsaghkadzor — the country's big ski resort

Tsaghkadzor (literally “Valley of Flowers”) sits at 1,840 m altitude in the Kotayk province, 60 km north of Yerevan and reachable in 75–90 minutes by car. The Soviet Union built it as the training centre for its Olympic ski team in 1967, and for several decades it produced the bulk of the USSR's competitive cross-country and alpine skiers. After independence the old Soviet infrastructure was completely replaced between 2004 and 2008 with modern Italian Leitner detachable chairlifts, fresh slope grooming and snow guns — the result is a small but credible mid-Alpine-quality ski area.

The lift system has five stages working from bottom to top. Stage 1 is a 4-seater chairlift from the village base at 1,966 m to 2,260 m (1,137 m of length, 1,214 passengers per hour capacity). Stages 2–5 are 2-seater chairlifts that step you up to the 2,819 m summit of Mount Teghenis, with transfers between stages without removing skis. A summit-to-base run is around 7 km of vertical, total skiable terrain on the mountain runs about 30 km of mostly red (intermediate) and a couple of black (advanced) pistes, with a 267 m beginner training run between the second and third stages. Cafes at the intermediate stations serve hot wine and Armenian shashlyk.

Equipment rental from the lift base or any of the surrounding hotels: skis with boots and poles $14 per hour or $41 per day; snowboard with boots $19 per hour; helmets and glasses $5.4 per hour each. Ski instructors are around $41 per hour for ski lessons, $54 per hour for snowboard. English-speaking instructors are usually available with a couple of days' notice.

Off the slopes, snowmobiles can be rented from the base parking area at around $81 per hour (one driver), quad bikes at $68 per hour. Sledding, tubing on the small dedicated tubing run, and snowshoeing through the Kecharis monastery forest above the village are all options for non-skiers. The Kecharis monastery itself (11th–13th century, founded by Prince Grigor Pahlavuni in 1003) sits in the snow above the village and is one of the most photogenic monasteries in the country.

Jermuk — ski in the morning, mineral pool in the afternoon

The smaller second ski area is at Jermuk, the historic spa town in Vayots Dzor province at 2,100 m altitude, two-and-a-half hours south of Yerevan. The single 900-metre chairlift built in November 2007 climbs from the town centre to the 2,480 m summit of Mount Lusassar, with two ski routes coming back down — a 1,400 m beginner piste and a 1,300 m intermediate piste. The vertical drop is around 380 m, the runs are well-groomed and significantly less windy than at Tsaghkadzor (a real advantage on cold January days), and the lift price is famously cheap — $2.7 per ascent or $16 for a full day pass.

The compelling thing about Jermuk is not the ski area (small) but the combination of skiing with the town's mineral-water spa hotels. Every serious hotel here has an indoor thermal pool fed by the famous 53°C Jermuk springs, plus saunas, treatment programmes (mineral baths, salt-mist inhalations, hydromassage, physiotherapy) and the heavy mineral-water drinking cures that have made Jermuk one of the great Soviet sanatorium towns. Half a day on the small ski slopes and then four hours in the spa is the perfect rhythm for a January weekend.

Equipment rental at the lift base: skis and full kit $16 per day, snowboard set $27 per day, instructor $27 per hour. There is a small rescue and first-aid service at the lift. The chairlift cafe at the top serves hot tea, Armenian trout (ishkhan) from Lake Sevan, and brandy. Combine your Jermuk stay with a half-day at the Jermuk waterfall (a 70 m vertical drop a 20-minute walk from the town) and the Jermuk Gallery of waters (the historic public mineral-water drinking hall, free to use).

Winter beyond the slopes — monasteries, lakes and snow

The country's monasteries take on an entirely different character in the snow. Sevanavank on its peninsula above Lake Sevan, Haghartsin and Goshavank in the Dilijan forest, Saghmosavank above its snowy Kasakh canyon, Kecharis above Tsaghkadzor — all four sites are open all winter, with almost no other visitors from December to March, and the contrast of black-tuff stone against fresh white snow is one of the great winter photographs of the Caucasus. Most are reachable from Yerevan in under two hours by car.

Lake Sevan partly freezes in cold winters — a sheet ice forms on the eastern bays around Shorzha and Norashen from early January and ice fishing for the lake's endemic ishkhan trout becomes a serious local pastime. Several lakeside guesthouses on the eastern shore will arrange ice-fishing trips with a local guide, augers and basic tackle for around $54 per person for a half day. The western shore around the Sevan peninsula gets the wind off the lake and rarely freezes solid, but the sunset views of the snowy Geghama mountains across the water are spectacular.

Dilijan National Park in Tavush province, 90 minutes north of Yerevan, is the country's gentlest winter base. The town sits at 1,500 m in a beech-and-oak forest valley, with cool snowy winters and a network of marked hiking trails through the forest that converts neatly to a cross-country and snowshoeing playground when the snow falls. The Dilijan Tourist Information Centre on Mishan Street will rent snowshoes for around $8.1 per day and point you at the Hidden Waterfall Track from Haghartsin monastery (a beautiful 4 km circuit in snow), the Parz Lake loop (6 km, gentle, ends at the frozen lake) or the Jukhtak Vank monastery walk through the forest.

The Wings of Tatev cable car (12 minutes, 320 m above the Vorotan gorge, the world's longest reversible cable car) runs through the winter and arriving at the snowed-in 9th-century Tatev monastery on the cliff top is one of the country's great winter experiences — a 4-hour drive south from Yerevan but worth the journey. The Aragats mountain massif at 4,090 m is the country's highest peak and a magnet for ski mountaineers; the southern access road typically closes from late October until late May, but local ski-mountaineering guides arrange snowmobile-assisted ascents from the village of Aparan for serious touring skiers.

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