Krasnaya Polyana. Rosa Khutor. Gorki City. Gazprom. How it all began.. 

Krasnaya Polyana. Rosa Khutor. Gorki City. Gazprom. How it all began..
January 1, 2021 marks 53 years since the foundation of the children's ski school in Krasnaya Polyana. In the 60s of the last century, the first boom in the development of alpine skiing in the Soviet Union began. Cable cars are being built, opening
the first ski resorts are built. But for the development of the slopes in Krasnaya Polyana, a person with an incredible desire, a punchy character and belief in indispensable success was needed. Meet Svetlana Moiseevna Guryeva, from her and her children's ski school the history of the ski resorts of Krasnaya Polyana began.
The irony of fate lies in the fact that the then existing GLK in Terskol played an important role in the emergence of the Krasnaya Polyana children's alpine skiing. It was there that Svetlana Mois Yeevna successfully worked as a director of a ski boarding school and her husband, Dmitry Alekseevich Guryev, worked as a coach. But a problem arose - the level of teaching at the local secondary school was, to put it mildly, not very high. And its graduates had little chance of going to university. It was this circumstance that prompted the spouses to move to Krasnaya Polyana, where at that time the Krasnaya Polyana school was considered the best in the south, in the Caucasus. By a happy coincidence, the mountain climatic and landscape conditions of Krasnaya Polyana at the end of the 60s met the requirements for the creation of ski slopes as much as possible. Svetlana Moiseevna was told about this by the famous climbers, the Maleinov brothers. They also mentioned the pre-war research for skiing. But that was not enough. To allocate resources (lifts, premises, ski equipment) for the construction of a ski base required more than just the creation of a ski school for children. And Svetlana Guryeva managed to "break through" this place for training of the USSR national ski team. This project brought resources and money for the construction of lifts in Krasnaya Polyana. Rosa Khutor. Gorki City. Gazprom. It was on this day that the Guryev family (Svetlana, Dmitry and their son), who recently appeared in Krasnaya Polyana, in front of the amazed natives, decided to try out the freshly fallen snow. One appearance of new settlers on the street has already made a splash among the locals - in bright imported elastic suits, ski boots, with skis on their shoulders.
From an interview with Svetlana Moiseevna Gurieva to the "TOTAL" magazine:
They looked at us as if we were crazy. They said: “It's impossible to ride here! There is such sticky snow. " I answered: "Now we will trample, and you will see how you can ride here!" We made an impromptu track and began to walk along it.
Since 1967 Krasnaya Polyana (Krasnaya Polyana. Rosa Khutor. Gorki Gorod. Gazprom) has been the object of close study for the possibility of development as a ski region. This year, the Guryevs, on the instructions of the Committee for Physical Culture and Sports, went to study the situation in the area of ​​the village of Krasnaya Polyana. They studied the area in detail for a month, surveyed almost all the slopes around Krasnaya Polyana in order to choose a place to place the Republican ski youth sports school. As a result, we stopped on the slopes near the Rzhany stream, by the way, 25 years later, the construction of the Alpika-Service GLK began here. Winter inspection by Dmitry Guryev confirmed the correctness of the choice of the place for the ski base. And on January 1, 1968, the Children's Youth Sports School was established in Krasnaya Polyana.
The enthusiastic predictions of alpine skiing enthusiasts, who have long noticed the Aibga slopes, have come true. It turned out that there is the most abundant snow cover in the Russian Federation - in winter, less than two meters does not happen! On the ridge itself, at an altitude of 2400 m, the snow does not melt all year round. The abundance of sunny days, the required air humidity, atmospheric pressure, which does not require acclimatization from athletes - all these are constant advantages of Krasnaya Polyana weather.
The route designers had to solve many problems. The slopes here are such that the most difficult thing is to choose the most profitable route by economic standards. Precisely the exact calculation, the desire to avoid unnecessary construction costs, forced sports specialists to abandon the tempting tracks "prepared" by nature itself.