Getting there
City buses No. 12 and No. 21 from Dostyk Avenue, 40–60 minutes.
Now. The rink is closed for reconstruction. Work is scheduled for 2025–2027, and the ice is promised back for the 2027/28 season.
The country's most famous ice is behind a fence right now. It is still worth the trip: the main thing here is not the rink but what stands above it.
The first natural-ice rink appeared in the gorge in 1951, and the big stadium opened on 28 December 1972. Its 10,500 square metres of ice were frozen from mountain meltwater, which gets the credit for their quality. The rink has more than two hundred world records to its name.
Further up the gorge stands a mudflow protection dam. It was created with directed explosions in October 1966 and April 1967. On 15 July 1973 it took the full force of a mudflow heading for the city, and it held. The overfilled basin had to be pumped out urgently: a job that would normally take five months was done in six days.
The reconstruction promises new refrigeration equipment, a viewing platform and the restored historic pool. The city administration says the look of the rink will be preserved.
- Altitude
- 1,691 m
- Ice area
- 10,500 m²
- Stadium opened
- 28 December 1972
- Dam
- held back the 1973 mudflow
