RIDE TOGETHER
Ski Touring · Splitboarding · Gudauri & Kazbegi
Sometimes I simply go riding.
I am in Gudauri two to three weeks every month of the winter season, and regularly head into the surrounding mountains on my splitboard. Some days I go alone, some with friends, and sometimes with people I have not met before but who share similar experience and a similar way of spending a day in the mountains.
Ride Together is a way to connect with those people. These are informal, non-commercial days in the mountains, purely for our own enjoyment: not a guiding service and not something that can be booked.
How It Works
NO FIXED PLAN
There is no fixed calendar, route or guaranteed departure.
LEAVE YOUR DATES
If you are coming to Gudauri, leave your dates and a little information about your mountain experience. If I am planning to go out at the same time, the conditions look interesting and the group feels like a good fit, I will get in touch.
CONDITIONS DECIDE
The route depends on the snow, weather, avalanche conditions, who is in the group and what is really the best thing to do that day.
SOMETIMES WE GO.
SOMETIMES WE DON’T.
Sometimes that means a long tour far beyond the resort. Sometimes a short morning outing. And sometimes conditions do not justify going at all.
The point is simply to have a good day in the mountains.
NOT A GUIDED TOUR
Ride Together is informal riding together, not a professional guiding service.
- No fee, no booking and no payment to me. Shared costs such as fuel are split at cost.
- No fixed itinerary, and no guaranteed date, route or departure.
- Plans and mountain decisions are shared. I have spent many winters in the mountains around Gudauri and Kazbegi and may share what I know about terrain, snow and routes, but everyone remains responsible for their own decisions.
- Conditions always have the final say.
Gudauri & Kazbegi
Gudauri gives access to a surprisingly large amount of terrain.
Depending on the season, possibilities may include Gudauri itself, the Cross Pass area, the Kazbegi region around Mount Kazbek and the Chaukhi massif, the Gudamakari valley, as well as other parts of Mtskheta-Mtianeti and Khevsureti.
I have been exploring and documenting this region for many years.
Some of that work became my book Gudauri & Kazbegi: Backcountry Skiing & Splitboarding Guidebook, with routes, maps, GPX tracks and practical information for people travelling independently in these mountains.
Looking for Professional Guiding?
If you need a specific date, a guide dedicated to your group, instruction, a planned itinerary or several consecutive days of ski touring, Ride Together is not the right format.
I can point you to independent professional guides working in Gudauri and Kazbegi.
Any professional guiding arrangement is made directly between you and the guide.
WHO THIS MAY WORK FOR
No one is guiding on these days: each of us makes our own decisions and is responsible for them.
- Experience: You have toured in the backcountry for at least two seasons and can look after yourself there. That means reading the avalanche forecast and forming your own view of the day’s risk; practised companion rescue (transceiver search, probing and shovelling); efficient skinning, including kick turns on steep slopes, and quick transitions; and speaking up when something doesn’t feel right. An avalanche course is a good sign.
- Equipment: Everyone needs their own touring setup and complete avalanche rescue kit (transceiver, shovel and probe) and should know how to use it.
- Flexibility: I’d be happy to ride with people who are flexible, open to changing the original plan as conditions develop, and willing to turn around when conditions call for it.
- Confident skiing / splitboarding: You should be able to ride confidently off-piste in variable snow and use your touring equipment.
- Fitness: A typical day is 5–7 hours in the mountains with 800–1,500 metres of ascent, including a few hours of continuous climbing. Longer days happen only when everyone involved agrees on them.
- Personal fit: Because this is informal time in the mountains, it works best when we get along naturally and enjoy a similar kind of mountain day. Sometimes the right people simply end up in the same place at the same time.
Interested in Riding Together?
Coming to Gudauri this winter? Leave your dates and a few words about your experience. If our plans line up, I will write to you.
Submitting this form is not a guarantee of a mountain day.
Other Mountain Journeys
Ride Together is only one small part of what happens around AMNIMAKEN.
Elsewhere I organise a limited number of longer mountain journeys, camps and expeditions, usually in small groups and often in places where I have a particular interest in the terrain, culture or journey itself.
MORE AT AMNIMAKEN