Hatsvali tops out at 2,348 metres and Tetnuldi at 3,160

Hatsvali was Mestia's first ski resort, and its real advantage is geography: a cable car connects it directly to the centre of Mestia, so there is no transfer and no car problem. It runs from 1,868 metres at its lowest point to 2,348 at its highest, a vertical range of 480 metres, with five runs totalling up to 5.5 kilometres. The spread of those runs is the point — the easiest is 500 metres, an intermediate run is 600 metres, and the longest and hardest is 4.4 kilometres, which means most of the skiable distance is in one demanding descent. Four cable cars serve the area, covering Hatsvali, Bigeli, Slalomi and Zuruldi, with electronic ticketing, and there are several places to eat, including one near the middle station and one near the top.

Tetnuldi sits 15 kilometres from Mestia and runs from 2,260 metres to 3,160 — a 900-metre range, nearly double Hatsvali's. It has five cable cars and nine runs totalling 13 kilometres, and its main slope is 9.5 kilometres, which the tourism administration calls the longest ski slope in the entire South Caucasus. It is also marked on the global freeride map and has hosted Freeride World Tour qualifiers since 2022. Two practical constraints come with the altitude. You need a high-clearance car to get there, which rules out most ordinary hire vehicles in winter. And off-piste skiing is permitted only with a professional guide, with specialised equipment mandatory; avalanche risk is monitored and runs open or close on that basis. Tetnuldi also has fewer places to eat than Hatsvali, though a few popular ones.

A unified multicard covers the cable cars at all Georgian ski resorts, Svaneti's two included alongside Gudauri, Bakuriani and Goderdzi, and comes as a one-day, two-to-three-day or seasonal option. For anyone planning more than a single area in one trip, that is the booking to understand first — it is what makes a Gudauri-and-Svaneti itinerary practical rather than a matter of buying separate passes twice. The tourism administration does not publish prices on the page, so the figure has to come from the operators. On accommodation it is candid: options at the resorts themselves are limited, with more in Mestia and the nearby villages, and Mestia's guesthouses serve Svan cooking.

Worth flagging, since it is the sort of number that ends up in a brochure. The same tourism administration page that gives Tetnuldi's altitudes as 2,260 to 3,160 metres — a 900-metre span — elsewhere describes a vertical drop of 1.7 kilometres on the main slope. Those two statements cannot both describe the same lift-served terrain, so one of them is wrong or is measuring something other than the serviced vertical. Anyone quoting a drop figure for Tetnuldi should get it from the resort rather than this page. The altitudes themselves are consistent across the page and are the safer numbers to use.