Gulmarg is a great destination for powder skiing. Multiple bowls are lined up and scream to be ripped apart. However, most of the terrain is very similar and the real steeps are lacking, with some exceptions of which my favourite is called Great White. A huge bowl with steep lines accessible within a couple of hours from the gondola offers great lines and a nice day out in the field.
After exploring the frontbowls of Gulmarg, time had come to explore the more remote areas of this ski area. Traversing all the way skier’s left takes you to a run all the way to Drang, a tiny village from where you’ll have to take a taxi back to Gulmarg. Going the opposite direction once you have left the top station and hiked to the top of Mount Apharwat, you can ski runs like “Leopard’s face” and ski down all the way to the army base. All great runs but not very steep. In order to access some steeper lines, you will have to go to the backside of the mountain. Shark’s Fin is the first bowl directly on the backside of the top of Mount Apharwat. There are a couple of nice sections to drop into this bowl. Directly from the top a long mellow run offers good skiing but more towards the left, when faced towards the bowl, there is a nice steep line and further to the left the main run is located. On the opposite side a couple of steep couloirs offer more technical skiing. The Banana couloir was a great adventure but because of the big rock in the middle of the run, not a very enjoyable ski…
The skiing in Shark’s Fin bowl is good but because it is directly visible from the top of Mount Apharwat it attracts quite a bit of traffic. Another bowl offering great skiing and more remote is Great White (it must be obvious by now that this area has been explored by Aussies…). Great White is not visible from Mount Apharwat and requires quite a bit of effort to both get to and get back from. When my skicompanions went for it, I suffered from a typical Indian food poisoning and therefore couldn’t join them. No worries though, I made sure I skied the damn thing before I left Kashmir.
Just before I left Gulmarg, the area got hit by another massive snowstorm. Everybody was excited and focused on the frontside of the mountain. The bowls had so much fresh snow that hiking was not necessary at all. I wasn’t interested in the frontbowls however, I had a different agenda. After taking the gondola to the top I hiked to the top of Mount Apharwat. On my way up there were just a few other skiers going up. They were going to Shark’s Fin, I continued my way to the ski the best line Gulmarg has to offer (in my opinion). My touring bindings had broken a couple of days before so I took my solid alpine setup. A combination of bootpacking and traversing finally got me to the area which is referred to as Great White. Since I was the first one to get there after the snowfall there were no tracks at all. Well, that is, no skitracks since there were quite a few tracks of animals. It might have been the elusive snow leopard who is known to live in that area…
It was so amazing to see a huge bowl (the picture on the left only shows a small portion of it…) completely untouched knowing I would be the first one to hit it. I took my time to absorb the moment before I got ready to drop in. I skied the line direcly from the top and it was pretty steep. I’d say it would be around 45 degrees consistently. The downside of the runs in Great White is that they are short. Exposure is really low so a fall would result in a tumble to the bottom but without any serious consequences. After my first turn I, for a short moment, thought I got caught by an avalanche before I realized it was a nice sluff. Nothing to worry about and I linked my turns on this beautiful face.
At the bottom I looked back at my signature before making my way further down. The fact that I was skiing on my alpine setup meant I had to go all the way down, which was a long way. Some great skiing but also a really long walk back to the army base from where a taxi brought me back to the resort. This more than two hour walk is not recommended, so if you ever consider skiing this run I’d recommend taking your touring setup. After skiing Great White you can then simply skin back out around Shark’s Fin and ski the frontbowls back to the gondola.
For me all the effort I had to put in to ski this run was still more than worth it!
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