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Video of an inbounds avalanche emerged on social media Monday. The footage was reportedly captured at Shymbulak Ski Resort in Almaty, Kazakhstan, although no news of the event has been shared or confirmed by the resort itself at the time of this publishing. But this isn’t the first time that intense, inbounds avalanche activity has been recorded at Shymbulak. A skier reportedly died there after being buried in a slide in 2022.
The video below was shot from a passenger on a chairlift as they rode directly over the slide. It clearly shows several people dangerously close to the avalanche path and it appears one person may have been caught and at least partially buried in the slide. Several skiers can be seen barely outrunning the avalanche as it rolls down the slope and eventually slows down. Meanwhile, the chairlift passengers can be heard screaming and alerting anybody below, potentially saving a life or two in the process.
“In the U.S., resorts usually keep steep or unstable terrain off-limits until control work is completed and conditions are considered safe but in Europe and elsewhere, that is often left up to the individual skier to assess and decide on what terrain is safe to ski that day as it’s all up for grabs,” Snowbrains pointed out while speaking to avalanche mitigation and control methods at resorts.
Be safe out there.
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