Location Report - Bechwi and Mestia Valleys, Georgia
24th February 2023 - Mestia
The Backdrop crew and friends are just back from one of our favourite touring destinations: Georgia. We timed it right for the snow, hiked in majestic mountain scenery, enjoyed the famous Georgian hospitality and food, and got to ride some great lines.
Snow Conditions & Weather
Like mainland Europe, Georgia had a very slow start to the ski season. The snow taps turned on about a week before we arrived, with regular snowfalls in super cold temps, sub -15C. When we arrived, a storm came in, 1.5-2m of snow fell, with little wind low down but higher about 3000m, with temps remaining super cold at night, but warm during the day. In the last 6 days, we were blessed with blue skies and little wind, and some hot hiking.
All that snow fell on almost no base, and so much fell that the roof of our hotel in the Bechwi valley collapsed before anyone could get up there to clear it off. No-one was hurt thankfully. At the same time, avalanches further away near the black sea, and more locally, took out major power lines and cell-phone insfrastructure, so we spent a few days totally out of touch with anyone outside that sparsely-populated valley.
All this made touring very interesting! During the storm, and after, we stuck to generally lower angle slopes, forest runs, but in recent days (in the company of Ilia Berulava - listen to our pod with him here), the head of Guide Office Georigia) found us some fantastic big faces between the various avalanche paths.
Some new experriences - during the storm, on one forest trail, we heard lots of ‘whoomphing’, often on almost every step, which seemed to be not the collapse of any weak layer but the compression of the entire fresh new snow column but more than once we triggered areas half the size of a tennis court suddenly drop down a couple of cm. And in recent days, up in Ushguli at the head of the Mestia valley, there were large natural and human-triggered avalanches on almost every compass aspect.
Now, as we are leaving, a new storm is coming in, but with warmer temps, rain currently falling at up to 1600m - hopefully that will cool down and give the tourers and skiers there yet more epic snow.
What went down
Pete and Andy from Backdrop spent a few days doing self-guided stuff in the Bechwi (said something like: “Beh-choh”) valley, staying at the wonderful Grand Hotel Ushba (which already has a new roof - fast workers, and they need to be, in between storms). We were totally out of touch with the rest of the world, so was a great opportunity to practice our terrain and avi management “skills”, such as they are.
Then Backdrop's Marty and a bunch of mates joined us - this growing extended family styling themselves as the “Longdrop crew” - for what was meant to be a village-to-village touring trip. Those plans had to change though as some of the high passes were still no-go areas, so instead we did day tours from Mestia (1400m), the remote village of Ushguli (2100m), and also back in the Bechwi valley (1600m).
In all tours in the last week we had clear skies for some astounding views of the wall of 4000m+ mountains between Georgia and Russia - including the double-matterhorn-esque twin peaks of Ushba (4710m & 4697m) and the jagged ridge of Shkhara, which at 5200m is Georgia’s tallest mountain.
Stay tuned for an upcoming Despatch, giving you more info about the whole trip, the people, the wonderful food and wine, ski-touring dogs, and the logistics of getting to Mestia.
In the mean time - stay safe, and have fun!
