Didveli Slope Complex
Best for intermediate and advanced skiers wanting Bakuriani's longest runs
Didveli is Bakuriani's modern face: a 2018 Doppelmayr gondola replaced the old Soviet lifts and now serves the resort's longest continuous descents, including a run stretching several kilometres through mixed pine and birch forest down the Trialeti Range's northern flank. The terrain here is more varied than Kokhta's nursery slopes across town — wider pitches, a few steeper pockets, and enough vertical to keep a confident intermediate occupied for a full day without repeating a run. Because Bakuriani sits at volcanic-soil altitude with naturally retentive snow, Didveli tends to hold a good base later into the season than lower resorts elsewhere in the Caucasus. It's a short taxi or shuttle from the town centre, and forms the anchor most multi-day visitors build their trip around, pairing it with a slower day on Kokhta or a rest day at the botanical garden or in Borjomi.
Kokhta-Mitarbi (Kokhta-2)
Best for families and complete beginners
Kokhta is where Bakuriani's identity as 'the nursery of Georgian skiing' actually comes from. Developed systematically from the 1930s as the USSR's premier family resort, its gentle, rolling gradient was deliberately engineered so that children and cautious adults could fall without consequence — a design philosophy that still defines the mountain today. The Kokhta-2 chairlift carries skiers to a summit view across the Lesser Caucasus toward the Turkish border, while the lower nursery runs remain some of the most forgiving beginner terrain in the country. This is the honest choice for a first-ever ski trip, a family with young children, or anyone who wants to build confidence before trying Didveli's longer runs or, eventually, Gudauri's steeper terrain. The resort ecosystem around it — small rental shops, ski schools, unpretentious cafés — has served this exact purpose for nearly a century.
K-90 and K-70 Ski Jump Hills
Best for watching serious ski jumping up close
Above Kokhta-Mitarbi, the K-90 and K-70 ski jump hills are still active training grounds for Georgia's national ski jumping team, a direct legacy of Bakuriani's Olympic-era ambitions. Watching jumpers launch from these towers — a genuinely rare spectacle outside dedicated winter-sports nations — is free to observe from below and gives the resort a competitive, working-mountain atmosphere that purely recreational ski towns lack. It's not an activity in the sense of something you book, but a detour worth timing: ask locally or at your accommodation when training sessions are scheduled, since they aren't a fixed daily attraction. Pair a visit here with a walk up toward the abandoned Soviet meteorological station on Kokhta's slopes for a sense of how deliberately this whole area was built for winter sport, decades before most of the world had heard of Georgian skiing.
The Kukushka Narrow-Gauge Railway
Best for the journey itself, not just the destination
The Borjomi–Bakuriani line, nicknamed the 'Kukushka' (cuckoo) for its whistle, is a 37-kilometre narrow-gauge railway converted from a Soviet-era logging line and still running as scenic passenger service — one of the only routes of its kind still operating in the Caucasus. The 2.5-hour climb from Borjomi threads through the Borjomi Gorge and forested switchbacks, arriving directly into ski country rather than a generic mountain-town bus stop. It runs less frequently than road transport and its winter schedule can be limited, so it suits travellers building in a slower, more atmospheric arrival rather than those short on time. For rail enthusiasts or anyone wanting a first taste of Bakuriani's history before touching snow, riding the Kukushka up and taking a marshrutka back (or vice versa) is the single best way to experience both the practical and romantic sides of getting here.
Bakuriani Alpine Botanical Garden
Best for a genuine non-ski rest day
Founded in 1910 by botanist Giorgi Kolakovski, this 18-hectare garden is one of only three alpine botanical gardens that existed in the former Soviet Union, and the only one in Georgia. In winter its 1,000-plus species of alpine and subalpine flora are dormant under snow rather than in bloom, but the site still offers a genuinely quiet counterpoint to the pistes — a chance to walk among century-old juniper stands and the original 1910 herbarium building without a lift ticket or a queue. It sits about 8 kilometres from the town centre, so it works best as a half-day outing by taxi rather than a spontaneous walk, and rewards visitors more in late June through September when the rhododendrons flower. For a winter trip it's a legitimate but secondary stop: worthwhile if you want a full rest day away from snow and gear, not essential if your time is limited to a short ski weekend.
Borjomi Town and Mineral Springs
Best for après-ski recovery and a change of pace
Twenty-five minutes down the valley from Bakuriani's slopes, Borjomi is the obvious pairing for a ski trip: this is the town whose volcanic mineral water became Georgia's most famous export, first bottled in 1890 and once favoured by the Russian imperial court. Central Park's Ekaterina Spring pavilion still dispenses the warm, naturally carbonated water for free, an unpretentious ritual that makes a genuinely restorative stop after two or three days on skis. The town's Romanov-era architecture, the adjoining Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park trailheads, and a slower pace than the resort itself make it the natural base for travellers who want skiing as part of a trip rather than skiing as the entire trip. Most Bakuriani visitors either stay in Borjomi and commute up by train or marshrutka, or reverse the pattern and use Borjomi as a one-day break partway through a ski-focused stay.
Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park
Best for extending the trip into shoulder-season hiking
Georgia's largest national park, 85,000 hectares of old-growth mixed forest folding through the Lesser Caucasus, sits just beyond Borjomi and technically outside the ski season's usual scope — most of its 12 marked trails, including the demanding 54-kilometre Crossing of Borjomi, are open May to October, not December to March. It earns its place in a Bakuriani guide anyway, because travellers who visit at the edges of the ski calendar (early December or late March, when snow is thin on lower trails but the resort is still technically open) can combine a short ski day with an afternoon hike toward the Lomismta Church ruins or into bear and chamois territory in the Kvabiskhevi Gorge. For anyone treating Bakuriani as one stop on a longer Samtskhe-Javakheti itinerary rather than a dedicated ski weekend, this is the reason to add an extra day rather than rush back to Tbilisi.