This stadium is a HUGE ice rink. The small black specks are people! It is located about 10 miles from, and 2,500 feet above, central Almaty. It was built as the training site for Soviet speed-skaters, which is obvious when one can see the entire area, which is the same shape as a standard running track but 3 or 4 times as big.

When it is not used for training, anyone can go there to skate. It is equipped to make artificial ice, but now it only operates in the colder months when most of the freezing is accomplished through "natural" means.   A couple hundred yards south of the stadium (to the left of the picture) is an earth dam that is about three times the height of the stadium's light towers. There is no water behind the dam, other than the small river that carved this valley and is not impeded. The dam was built to contain mud-and-rock slides that often occur in the Tien Shan mountains. There are additional containment structures further down the valley toward Almaty. Before these were built, more than one mudslide came out of the mountains and into Almaty, once almost to the center of the city. Both the soil composition and the fact that it is an earthquake-prone area contribute to the potential for massive mud slides.