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HUnza Valley in the moonlight. PHOTO: EXPRESS
HUNZA:
Every winter for decades, the swimming pool outside Aleena Gul’s home in Pakistan’s Hunza Valley has been transformed into an ice rink, framed by the jagged peaks of the Himalayas and the stone walls of Altit Fort. This year, that is not the case.
Gul can see the swimming pool which also serves as a hockey arena from her room. For years, she would wake up at dawn, lace up her skates and walk straight out of her front door onto solid ice.
After four years of college, she came back wanting to play again, but found herself waiting for winter to arrive.
“There is a big difference between 2018 and today,” said Gul, 21, captain of her team and among the first women from Hunza to take up the sport.
In the mountains of northern Pakistan, winters come later and behave unpredictably. Cold waves are shorter, freeze-thaw cycles unstable.
In the broader Hindu Kush and Himalayan region, scientists report fewer extreme cold events and shorter snow seasons; what locals call a “snow drought,” when snowfall fails to stabilize.
The change is visible in Hunza. Data compiled by WeatherWalay, a climate analysis platform, shows that average winter precipitation has fallen by about 30% since the late 2010s, recording four consecutive years below normal.
Some recent winters have also been 2 to 3°C warmer, so there is less snow to maintain the ice. Unlike European resorts with artificial snow, the Hunza tournament relies entirely on natural ice. In a valley heavily dependent on tourism, winter sports now depend on weather that no longer follows the old rhythms.
For eight seasons, Altit Swimming Pool has hosted the Karakoram Interlude, a community tournament that attracts teams from across northern Pakistan and extends the tourist season beyond summer.
In a good year, the rink glows under floodlights, spectators leaning over the stone parapets, cups of tea in hand, their breath rising in white clouds.
This year, organizers prepared the rink as always, pouring water at night and smoothing the surface by hand to allow temperatures below -20C to set the layers. “We stayed up until 3 a.m. trying to help him freeze,” Gul said.
“We are doing everything we can.” In 2024, “we started to see a sudden change in weather conditions, such as snowfall, frost levels and overall temperatures,” said Sadiq Saleem, 31, president of the Altit town management company and a founding member of the SCARF youth organization, which pioneered ice hockey in the valley.
Thin puddles formed where the blades scraped the ice. Hairline cracks propagated beneath the surface. Organizers pressed their palms to the ice, checking for flex and listening for cracks.
“We worked on this arena for a week,” said Naseer Uddin, 34, co-founder of SCARF. “But when the sun came up strong, it ruined everything.”
The opening ceremony took place under the spotlights, but organizers warned that the rink was too fragile to accommodate entire teams. Only the captains came forward to unveil the jerseys alongside the sponsors, wary of the melting ice.
The traditional opening night friendly match was canceled.
Chase away the cold
We hardly had time to discuss the weather. Within hours, organizers were moving through the aisles of Altit, calling players and knocking on doors.
The tournament was moved nearly two hours north to Sost, one of Pakistan’s last towns before the Chinese border, where colder air offered a better chance of having enough ice. They had done it before.
Two winters ago, when the Altit Pool also did not freeze, the ice at Sost, about 2,800 meters (9,186 feet) above sea level – about 300 to 400 meters higher than Altit – held firm.
This year this solution also failed. For Gul, it was like chasing a season that kept going backwards.
In Sost, the rink stretches across an exposed part of the valley floor near the Khunjerab Pass, beneath steep, wind-cut ridges, channeling cold air from even higher altitudes. And although the surface was firmer than that of the Altit pool, some parts were thin. The players tested it carefully before committing their weight.
Winter can’t pay the bills
It’s not just the players who feel the pressure. Unpredictable winters take a toll on cafes, guesthouses and transport operators. Small guesthouses without heat struggle to deal with pipes that freeze, cutting off the water, then thaw and refreeze unpredictably, increasing the risk of bursts and costly repairs.
Globally, fewer regions can reliably host winter sports as temperatures rise. In Hunza, a district of less than 100,000 inhabitants, residents face this reality without artificial snow or a refrigeration system – and without certainty.
Winter has long been quieter than summer in Hunza, but locals say erratic snowfall, flooding and impassable roads deter visitors who come to admire the snow-capped peaks and frozen lakes, just as the Karakoram interlude was beginning to attract travelers from across Pakistan and beyond.
