Most people come to Gulmarg for the lift-served vertical, and most people never leave it. That's understandable, the gondola delivers a whole day's climbing in twenty minutes for the price of a lift pass. But the terrain that starts where the lift's influence ends is quieter, larger and, on the right day, better.
Ski touring in Gulmarg means skinning beyond the gondola's reach into the wider Pir Panjal, either as a half-day extension off the Apharwat ridge or as a full-day objective with a committing descent and exit.
Why tour here at all
The lift lines get tracked; the tours don't. Even in Gulmarg's light traffic, the obvious lines off the ridge see skiers. An hour of skinning takes you to terrain that sees a handful of people a season. The ratio of effort to solitude here is unusually favourable, because so few visitors bring touring gear at all.
Weather flexibility. When wind holds the gondola, or when the upper station is in cloud, touring from lower down is often the only way to have a day at all. This is the argument that converts most sceptics. A week in Gulmarg will typically contain at least one day where Phase 2 doesn't run, and on that day the people with skins have a mountain and everyone else has a hotel lobby.
Aspects the lift can't give you. Lift-served terrain constrains you to what falls away from the ridge. Skinning opens up the aspects that held the best snow this particular week rather than the aspects the infrastructure happens to serve. In a season where north-east has been getting hammered by wind and north-west has been quietly holding, that is the difference between an average week and a good one.
The assessment comes free. The point made on our Backcountry page in reverse: the lift removes the ninety minutes of observation that normally comes attached to gaining altitude. Skinning gives it back. You feel the surface change with elevation and aspect, you notice where the skin track collapses and where it holds, you see the wind effect on the crest before you're standing on it. A touring day is a better-informed day almost automatically.
It is a different kind of day. Quieter, slower, more deliberate. Some people find they prefer it. Others find one tour is enough and go back to the lift, which is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to reach with evidence.
Tour options
Half-day ridge extensions, Skin from the upper station along the Apharwat ridge to access terrain beyond the lift's fall line, then descend and ride the gondola back up. Roughly 45 to 90 minutes of skinning. The realistic introduction for most visitors, and the best way to find out whether you like touring at 4,000 m. Low commitment, easy to abandon, and it gets you to snow the lift crowd doesn't reach.
Babareshi drainage tours, Lower elevation, tree-protected snow, and a genuinely different character from the alpine above. The strongest option in poor visibility, and pleasant on a cold clear morning. This is also the tour that works when the upper mountain is closed entirely, which makes it the most-used option of a bad-weather week.
Apharwat summit, Skin or bootpack from the upper station at 3,980 m to the summit at 4,210 m (13,812 ft), then choose a descent depending on stability and aspect. Roughly 230 vertical metres of ascent. Short vertically, significant in feel, this is the actual top of the mountain, which the gondola does not reach, and standing on it is a different experience from standing at the lift station 230 m below.
Worth stating clearly because so much of the internet gets it wrong: the gondola does not take you to the summit of Apharwat. The Phase 2 station is at 3,980 m. The summit is at 4,210 m. Sites quoting 4,200 m or 4,300 m for the gondola are conflating the two. Reaching the summit requires this tour, or a bootpack.
The Drang skyline descent, A full day. Ridge access, a long skyline traverse and a big descent toward Drang. Early start, committing exit, road pickup arranged in advance, and dependent on a genuinely stable snowpack. This is the flagship tour and it is not offered every week, because not every week produces a snowpack that justifies it.
Sunshine Peak and the far side objectives, Distinct aspects, distinct timing, and terrain that sees very little traffic. Full-day objectives with real exits.
Altitude, and why fit skiers still struggle
Skinning at 3,980 m is not skinning at 2,000 m. Visitors arriving from sea level routinely find their first tour harder than their fitness predicts, because they're doing aerobic work at altitude on day two of the trip. We schedule touring days after several lift days for that reason, and pace accordingly.
The mechanism is straightforward and worth understanding rather than just being told. At 3,980 m the air holds roughly 60% of the oxygen available at sea level. Your body compensates over days to weeks, not hours, increased breathing rate immediately, then increased red cell production over a much longer period. What that means practically is that on day two of a trip you are working at a genuine physiological deficit that no amount of home fitness offsets, and on day six you are meaningfully better at it.
If you're arriving straight from Delhi or an international flight, plan on two days of lift skiing before your first tour. It isn't a fitness question, it's an acclimatisation one, and the two are frequently confused by people who are used to their fitness being sufficient.
Signs to take seriously. Headache that doesn't respond to fluid and rest, nausea, unusual breathlessness at rest, disturbed sleep beyond the first night, or a marked loss of appetite. These are common and usually mild at Gulmarg's elevations, but they are worth reporting to your guide rather than pushing through. Descending is the treatment that always works, and here descent is easy, you sleep at 2,650 m, which is a considerable advantage over destinations where you sleep high.
What actually helps. Arriving a day or two before you ski hard. Drinking more than you think you need. Not drinking alcohol on the first two nights. Pacing the first tour deliberately slowly, the skin track pace that feels absurdly easy at the bottom is usually about right. And going up gradually rather than making the summit tour your first objective.
The skin track is a skill
An underrated point that separates people who enjoy touring from people who endure it.
Setting a track. Angle matters more than fitness. A track set too steeply is exhausting and, on firm snow, prone to slipping. A track set well is a gradient you can hold a conversation on. Our guides set the track, which is one of the quiet advantages of a guided tour, a badly set track can add an hour to a day and take the pleasure out of it.
Kick turns. The technique most visitors haven't practised and the one that most determines whether a steep skin track is manageable. Worth ten minutes of practice at home on a slope with no consequence.
Pacing. Aerobic, sustainable, and slower than feels right for the first twenty minutes. Groups who start fast arrive at the top in worse shape and take longer overall.
Transitions. Skins off, bindings locked, layers changed, the whole sequence should take a couple of minutes and be practised. On a cold ridge at 4,000 m in wind, a slow transition means a cold group, and a cold group makes worse decisions. This is the specific reason we plan transition points in sheltered locations rather than at the most scenic spot.
Layering for the swing. You will overheat skinning and freeze on the ridge. The discipline is starting cold, deliberately underdressed at the bottom, so you don't have to stop and strip five minutes in, and having a proper insulated jacket that goes on at every transition without exception.
A full-day tour, hour by hour
Using the Drang skyline as the example, because it is the most committing day we run and the structure explains why the commitment is real.
05:30, the decision is already made. A tour like this is confirmed the night before, not on the morning, because the logistics require it: transport positioned at the pickup point, timings agreed, food and water sorted. It is confirmed only if the snowpack, the forecast and the group all justify it.
06:30, depart. Early, and earlier than clients expect. The reason is not the ascent; it is the descent and the exit. Every hour of delay in the morning is an hour subtracted from your margin in the afternoon, and the afternoon is where a long day gets decided.
07:00–10:00, ridge access and the skyline traverse. A long, steady effort at altitude, with the surface changing as you gain height and cross aspects. This is where the day's snowpack picture gets assembled, the guide is reading the whole time, and a poor picture here means the objective changes before it becomes a problem.
10:00–11:00, the decision point. There is a point on this tour beyond which retreating costs more than continuing, and it is reached before the descent. That is where the honest conversation happens: how is the group moving, what has the snow shown us, is the light doing what we expected. Turning around here is a normal outcome, not a failure, and the alternative descent from this point is a good day in its own right.
11:00–13:30, the descent. Long, sustained, one at a time on the serious pitches, with regroup points chosen in advance. This is the part people came for and it is a smaller fraction of the day than they imagine.
13:30–15:30, the exit. Down through changing snow into lower-elevation terrain, with flat sections, drainage navigation and the ski-out toward the pickup. On a snowboard this is the crux of the day rather than the descent.
15:30–16:30, pickup and the drive back. Which is why it was arranged the night before.
The point of publishing this is that it makes clear what a full-day tour actually is: a long committing day with a limited descent window, not a lift lap with extra steps. Clients who understand that in advance have a better day than clients who discover it at 11am.
Group management on a tour
Touring changes the social dynamics of a day and it is worth naming, because it is where mixed groups run into trouble.
On a lift day, differences in fitness are absorbed by the lift. On a tour they are not. The group climbs at the pace of its slowest member, and the slowest member knows it. That is manageable when everyone has agreed to it in advance and corrosive when they haven't.
Our practical approach: we tell groups honestly at booking whether their spread is workable for the objective they've asked about, we set a track pace that the whole group can hold rather than one that suits the front, and on mixed-ability groups we would rather split the day than run a tour where one person is suffering and three are frustrated. This is also why we ask about fitness at booking and not on the skin track.
If you're assembling a group of friends for a touring day, the honest question to ask each other beforehand is not "can we all ski this?" but "can we all climb this at the same pace for three hours?" Those turn out to be different questions.
Touring when the gondola isn't running
The scenario that converts most people, and worth planning for rather than reacting to.
Phase 2 goes on wind hold regularly. In a seven-day trip you should expect at least one day where the upper mountain is unavailable, and possibly more. For most visitors that day is a write-off: a late breakfast, a walk in the village, a look at the weather app every twenty minutes.
For anyone with skins it is a day. The Babareshi drainage tour works entirely below the affected elevation. Skinning from Kongdoori or from the village opens terrain that has nothing to do with whether the upper stage is turning. And the mountain on those days is as empty as it ever gets, because everybody else has correctly concluded that lift-served skiing is off.
The practical implication for trip planning: if you own touring gear, bring it even if you don't plan to tour. The marginal cost is baggage. The marginal benefit is converting a lost day into one of the better ones of the week, and wind-hold days are common enough that this trade is worth making.
If you don't own touring gear, this is the argument for asking about rental before you fly.
Gear
Bindings: Tech or frame touring bindings. Alpine bindings won't work.
Skins: Bring your own, cut to your skis. Bring spare tail clips and a small roll of tape, skin glue fails in cold and there is no replacement available locally.
Skis: 95–110 mm underfoot is the sweet spot. Wider skis climb worse and ride better; pick your compromise. If you're bringing one pair for the whole trip and touring on one or two days, err toward the ski that makes the lift days good.
Boots: A boot with a genuine walk mode. Skiing a full alpine boot uphill for ninety minutes is possible and unpleasant.
Safety: Transceiver, shovel, probe, non-negotiable. See Avalanche Safety.
Layers: You will overheat skinning and freeze on the ridge. Bring a proper belay jacket for transitions.
Ski crampons, if you have them. Firm early-morning skin tracks after a clear cold night are exactly what they're for, and Gulmarg produces those conditions regularly.
Repair kit. Multi-tool, spare binding screws, a length of ski strap, tape. There is no touring-specific repair shop in Gulmarg, and a failed binding on a tour is a long walk.
The Pir Panjal, briefly
Worth a paragraph, because most visitors arrive knowing the name Gulmarg and nothing about the range it sits in.
Apharwat is part of the Pir Panjal, the outer Himalayan range that separates the Kashmir Valley from the plains to the south. It is the range the Western Disturbances hit first, which is a large part of why this valley gets the snow it does, the systems arrive from the west and unload against the first significant barrier they meet.
For a touring skier, what that means practically is that the terrain does not stop at the edge of what the gondola serves. It continues, in every direction, for a very long way. Almost all of it is unskied in any given season. Very little of it has been described in English anywhere. That is the real touring proposition here, and it is why touring in Gulmarg is a different activity from touring in a range where every line has a name, a grade and a guidebook entry.
It is also why touring here without local knowledge is a poor idea. There is no guidebook to be wrong about; there is simply terrain, and someone who has been in it or someone who hasn't.