Winter Driving in Georgia: What Closes, What Opens, Which Car

Winter, counted

Every one of the 267 places in our database carries a best-season window, an open-year-round flag, an elevation and a minimum car category. Counting them for December to March gives a cleaner answer than any forum thread:

• 161 places are in season in winter - 159 with a year-round window and two whose season is only winter, Gudauri and the Hatsvali and Tetnuldi ski areas.
• 106 places carry a window that excludes winter - 69 May-to-October, 36 June-to-September and one April-to-October.
• 52 places are flagged as not accessible year-round; 215 are.

The 161 winter places are not the hard ones. 147 of them are rated for an economy car and 14 for a crossover; 128 are paved to the car park and 32 mostly paved. Not one is on a 4x4-only road. The 52 closed places are the opposite: 21 need an off-road 4x4, 26 a crossover, and 15 of the 17 4x4-only roads in the country are among them. Sixteen of the 52 sit above 2,000 m.

So the winter rule is simple: the country you can drive in winter is the low country. Of the 20 places above 2,000 m, only two have a winter season.

The passes

Two of these need honesty rather than optimism. The Abano Pass is the only vehicle road into Tusheti; our FAQ puts it open roughly June to October, and it needs an off-road 4x4, prior written agreement, and carries an additional excess of 500 ₾. Goderdzi has a small ski resort near the summit, but the road over the pass closes from about November to May, our data marks it June to September, and we do not treat it as a winter driving destination. Jvari Pass is the one that stays open on paper and closes in practice: the Gudauri section of the Georgian Military Highway shuts periodically for avalanche risk, sometimes for hours, sometimes for a day, in both directions. The Tbilisi-Batumi and Tbilisi-Kazbegi highways themselves stay open all year.

The winter destinations, and the car each one requires

Every winter resort in the database is rated crossover, not economy, and that is not a sales pitch: it is altitude, gradient and an unploughed final climb. Under the rental terms the crossover category means a minimum age of 23 and a licence held for 3 years, with a young-driver surcharge of 15 ₾ per day between 23 and 25; the deposit and the CDW excess on this category are both 600 ₾.

Two cautions from the same data. Hatsvali and Tetnuldi are the only winter-season entry also flagged as not year-round, because the season is short and the approach is partly rough. And Ushguli, two hours beyond Mestia in summer, is a June-to-September, gravel, off-road-only place that is often cut off for weeks in winter - the FAQ permits it in the 4x4 category alone, and it should not be on a winter plan at all.

What the rental terms say about winter

• Winter tyres are on every car from 1 December to 1 April, included in the rate. That is equipment, not a solution: they shorten braking distances and do nothing about ice.
• Snow chains are 20 ₾ per rental from December to March and free on the 4x4 category; a roof rack is 25 ₾ per day, SUV and 4x4 only.
• CDW and TPL are included, with an excess by category: 300 ₾ economy, 600 ₾ crossover, 800 ₾ commercial van, 1,000 ₾ business class and minivan, 1,200 ₾ off-road 4x4. SCDW at 25-45 ₾ per day lowers the excess; on the off-road 4x4 an excess of 300 ₾ remains even with SCDW.
• Tyres, wheels, the underbody, mirrors and the interior are not covered by CDW; replacing a tyre costs 120-400 ₾. Damage on gravel or unpaved roads is not covered unless the car is in the 4x4 category - and in winter an unploughed track counts.
• Roadside assistance runs 24/7. If a technical fault that is not your doing stops the car, a replacement reaches you within 6 hours at no charge. The emergency number is 112.
• New Year week carries a +10% seasonal coefficient, as does Easter week.

Honest advice for a winter drive

1. Plan around eight hours of light, not twelve. In December the sun sets in Tbilisi around 17:20, and earlier in a valley. Mountain hairpins, darkness and black ice together are a combination we do not recommend to any visiting driver.
2. Do not pair a Kazbegi day-trip with an evening flight. If the Gudauri section closes while you are north of it, you come back a day later. Build the mountain leg so you are home one day before you fly.
3. Descend in a low gear and double your following distance. Winter tyres do not repeal physics.
4. Refuel at half a tank. Stations thin out above 1,500 m, and a closure can mean two hours idling in a queue.
5. Learn to fit the chains in a dry car park, not at -8 °C on the pass. We will show you at handover.
6. Choose the low routes. Fourteen of our 49 routes carry a year-round season, among them the Kakheti wine loop, the western Georgia food road, the Borjomi spa day and the Military Highway to Kazbegi, which is rated crossover and moderate for a reason.

A season in Gudauri or Bakuriani is a long stay, and the rate falls with length: see the monthly car rental page. For the month-by-month picture across the whole map, read when to visit Georgia; for what the surface does to your day, driving in Georgia. Then pick the category at car rental and ask us anything the FAQ leaves open.

Crossover / SUV — Price from 130 ₾/day