January 30, 2010

No Snow

33°57'30.70"N & 35°48'53.97"E
Dear Theo,
In case you miss the skiing in Lebanon; don’t. This morning we went up, after getting reassurances from several people that there was plenty of snow. After all, it had been raining for quite some days. As a matter of fact, the weather had been so bad that an Ethiopian airliner went down in it. When we got our skis at Maison du Ski (you’d think these guys would know snow, no?) we were again reassured that, no, all slopes were open. As we were driving up, we started getting in calls from friends who already were on the slope that Cabbane (name of a ski-lift) closed, al little later hat Lac (another ski-lift) had closed, and when we reached the parking of Wardeh, all lifts had closed. The only lifts that were operating were the baby hills, and I did not exactly work my way into my (poeder prinses) ski suit for that.
We went snow-shoeing instead. When we got back to Beirut, it was 27 degrees Celsius. 27! I think we can call this the official end to the ski-season in Lebanon.
On a brighter note, I got a crash course in underwater-wreck salvaging, types of black-boxes and how they are going to lift flight 409 from a depth of 1000-something meters by someone who is actually looking for the plane and who’s done lots of salvage operations. Lots of insiders stuff coming up, so keep you posted. How's Aqaba?
Talk to you later.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's SNOW,LOTS OF SNOW!!!!!
the reason most of the slopes were closed today is according to www.skileb.com this; Today strong winds will only leave lower ski lifts to operate in #Mzaar #Cedars and #Laklouk. Safety comes first!

Unknown said...

Finally I found your lovely letter to me, Siets! Regards from Holland, where snow is finally melting...