Skiing In Dubai
Trip Start
Nov 18, 2007
1
7
Trip End
Apr 16, 2008
Where I stayed
Dubai,
United Arab Emirates
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Bob was from Grand Junction and worked for a drilling supply company. We talked about the great run the Rockies had...until the World Series, and how disappointing the Broncos were this season. Then I asked him if this was his first time skiing here, and he said "Yes".
"I talked to my wife in Junction last night and she said it was cold, but there was no snow in sight," he said.
Four minutes later, we were dumped out at the top of the mountain for our first tracks of the season
Dubai Creek at Night
. Bob asked me to take a photo of him on his digital camera to email to the folks back home. No one would believe him if he told them he was skiing today...in Dubai ! It was approaching 90 degrees outside in the Arabian Desert , but here we were skiing on what could pass for a chilly and overcast day in early January. It was 25 degrees and there was a cold, blue cast to the indoor lighting at the Ski Dubai facility in the giant Mall of the Emirates. There are currently three indoor skiing facilities in the world and Dubai , of course has one of them. And, like everything else in this sheikdom of excess, there are plans to build another one...but this time the world's largest.
While many view Aspen as a bit over the top in many respects, it pales in comparison to a place like Dubai . I have to admit that when my wife Marjorie and I decided to stop over here for a few days that I half expected to see camels running the streets and public executions or floggings. Well, maybe not quite that, but.... I certainly couldn't picture skiing...on snow. I had heard about the excesses but I was used to Aspen . So, how excessive could it be? VERY!
But strangely, both city's, though world's apart, share many similarities
City Of Gold
. Dubai and Aspen began their modern careers in the 1800's. The nomadic Bedouin Al Maktoum family strolled into, what was then, a little Arabian Gulf fishing and pearl diving village in the 1850's and set up camp. They liked it, decided to stay, and installed themselves as rulers, not unlike the first white settlers who did the same while in search of gold and silver in the Roaring Fork Valley . As the town grew, and trade between the Middle East , Africa and India increased, Dubai became an important commercial hub for vessels moving goods between Africa and the Indian subcontinent. But instead of taxing the heck out of every boat that docked there, the Al Maktoum's, savvy business men even in those days, made the decision to make their little town a tax free port...no import or export duties...unlike many of their neighbors. Business boomed. Traders and shippers came. The town grew and the Al Maktoum's became very rich...and popular.
And while oil and gas revenues fueled the latest round of expansion in the sheikdom in the 1970's, the family realized early on that their energy resources would not last forever. In fact it is estimated that there are reserves of only twenty years left. Less than 10% of current revenues come from oil and gas
Paul Makes A Run
. The rest come from business, trade, banking, land development and tourism. And tourism is the fastest growing of these. While Dubai sits on the Arabian Peninsula , right next to extremely conservative Saudi Arabia , all of the seven Emirates along the eastern coast are nothing like their more conservative big brother to the west. Over 80% of Dubai 's population is foreign born. Walking through the opulent shopping malls westerners dressed in shorts and tank tops outnumber locals by four or five to one. When you go to the beach, you would think you were on the French Riviera. Bikinis and Speedos rule.
Anyway, everyone wants to know, "How does this skiing thing work in Dubai , anyhow?"
The Ski Dubai complex sits at one end of the huge Mall Of The Emirates on the south side of the city, a $10.00 taxi ride from downtown. I step up to the ticket window and a Gulf Arab, dressed in a long, white thobe and a red and white kafia, sells me a ticket for two hours for $46.00. Additional hours cost just $12.00 and your card can be recharged electronically at several locations inside the facility if you feel like making a few more runs. The cost includes all clothing except hats and gloves (for hygienic reasons), boots, skis or snowboards, and poles. I charge it to my credit card and I receive a swipe card that will serve as my locker key and my lift ticket.
Next it's off to the clothing line where I receive ski pants, jacket and socks.
Then it's over to the equipment line
Marjorie at Ski Dubai
. Here I pick up boots and skis (in my case) or snowboards, depending on your preference. The kid working the line is from Morocco . I give him my shoe size (13) and he comes back in a minute with a pair of boots. I order up a pair of Rossignol rental skis and he takes one of my boots to fit the bindings. I'm told to step on the silver scale in front of the counter so he can get my exact measurements. He then references his chart for binding settings, grabs his screwdriver, and with a few turns has me set up. I head to the men's locker room. I change into my rented red and blue ski suit, store my street clothes (shorts, T shirt and sandals) and swipe my card to lock the door before heading off to the slopes.
Walking through the rotating, glass doors I am transported from the hot, dry desert to the cold, crisp mountains, in about ten feet and three seconds. It is FREEZING in here. The cold glow from the dim lighting (a far cry from the warm glitz of the mall itself) and blue walls make me feel like I'm in Vermont in January. The snow is not unlike that either. Its hard-packed, but what the heck, it is snow and I am skiing after all.
There is a midway station where you can unload for the short trip down, or stop in at the St
Experts Only in Any Language
. Moritz Café. The runs themselves, as you can imagine, are not that long, by Rocky Mountain standards. Several hundred vertical feet and about 1,300 feet of skiing from top to bottom. There is one so-called "Experts Only" run which is a bit steeper and narrower...similar let's say to the bottom pitch at Buttermilk. But, hey, this is the Arabian Desert here, not Aspen . According to the folks at Ski Dubai they hoped to see about a half million skier/snowboarder day visits in their first year (2005). They ended the year at over 850,000! While that doesn't exceed Aspen 's total numbers for all four mountains, it is higher than any one individual area, surpassing Snowmass' 769,570 last season. And their single day record of more than 7,800 paying customers (on a Muslim holy day) comes pretty close to a good day at Snowmass.
While the skiing might not be quite as good as Aspen 's, the place does have some distinct advantages. It's open 365 days a year, from 9:00am until 11:00pm , so if you have the urge to make a few runs some evening in the middle of a hot and steamy July, you can do it. No waiting until November or December. Plus, there is nothing like skiing at low altitude (the highest peak sits at about 300 feet above sea level) to make you feel like you could win a World Cup race
Ice Cream Anyone?
. No oxygen deprivation or altitude sickness here. I was very curious about who might be skiing and working here since it's not the kind of place that would ordinarily attract ski bums. Again, there were similarities with Aspen . On my second trip up the lift I visited with a young lady named Adrianna who, after she whacked me in the head with the safety bar, told me she was from Poland . She was on a package tour for four days. She said that she and her friends usually went to France or Austria to ski, but no one that she knew had ever skied in Dubai .
I met a couple from Australia who were stopping over for a few days and decided to give it a try. "None of our friends at home will believe this," they told me. I was told by the people at Ski Dubai that they see about a 50/50 split, in their skier/boarder visits, between foreign tourists and people currently living in the Emirates.
Then there was an instructor, Hamdoun, from Morocco by way of France , who was shepherding around two twelve year old American girls and two guys from Germany on business
Building, Building and More Building
. And so it went. The staff itself is made up of people from twenty-seven different countries, most of who are trained by a ski industry training company based in Austria . And not unlike Aspen , checking out the stars on skis is also sport in Dubai . Maria Sharapova, his air-ness Michael Jordan, former United Nations head Kofi Annan, and the gloved-one Michael Jackson have all taken a few runs here while visiting the Gulf...or so I was told.
The area also includes a freestyle and half pipe zone, plus a snow park, where those a little concerned about taking their lives into their hands on the slopes can do some tubing or tobogganing near the bottom. The day that I visited there were a group of twenty-something Emirati men and women decked out in white thobes (for the men), black abayas (for the women), and calf length down coats, experiencing snow for the first time, one of them told me. They were like a group of little schoolchildren, laughing wildly as one after another spun wildly down the course until they would either flip over or crash out at the bottom.
After a rough day on the slopes you can stop in for a bite to eat at a huge array of restaurants including everything from a McDonald's (where the Big Mac Value Meal is cheaper than in Aspen) to fine dining that matches anything Aspen has to offer
Sunset In The Desert
. Then it's off for some retail therapy in a place where the Hyman Avenue Mall would be a mere short appendage on the giant octopus of hallways filled with every high end boutique and shop imaginable. And if you want to immerse yourself in the entire ski resort experience you can stay at the five star, 400 room, Kempinski Hotel, with its ski chalet lodgings facing the slopes.
But as you can imagine, there is much more to Dubai than most westerners imagine. Dubai has been retooling itself as a major tourist destination, with unrivaled shopping, desert adventures and fabulous beaches. The Tiger Woods development and championship golf course is due for completion in the next year or so. His smiling face adorns billboards throughout the city. There are currently eight courses in and around the city, with more planned. 2008 will see the city host the world's richest professional golf tournament, the European Tour's Dubai Open which Woods has committed to play in. And why not? He owns a home on the man made Palm Island development, a piece of real estate so big that it is easily identifiable from the space shuttle.
Dubai also hosts the world's richest day of thoroughbred horse racing, The Dubai World Cup held in late March, some of the richest purses in both men's and Women's tennis, and the richest Formula 1 race in the world.
Building projects abound. The city's skyline is covered with construction cranes. Within a few years Dubai will be home to the world's tallest building, the world's largest hotel (over 8,500 rooms), the world's largest shopping mall, and the world's largest indoor snow skiing operation
Busy Night At The Berber Shop
. In the meantime, more European air carriers are scheduling non-stop flights from the continent. We met two young ladies from Denmark who had flown down on SAS for five days of shopping, sightseeing and beach time to escape the dreary cold and damp of Copenhagen .
Dubai is also moving to cement its position as the crossroads of the Middle East by building a new airport to handle the ever increasing flow of traffic connecting Europe , Africa and the Middle East with the Indian subcontinent and Asia . The Dubai based carrier Emirates Air recently purchased 91 new planes, at the Dubai Air show, from Airbus and Boeing. Their order included 12 of Airbus's super jumbo A380's (555 passengers). It is currently estimated that by 2010 Emirates Air will surpass British Airways as the airline flying the most international passenger seats per mile in the world.
There is however, the nagging question of how all of this has been done. Foreign laborers from India , Pakistan and Bangladesh work for a few dollars a day, which is way more than what they might make at home, but still far less than the multinational companies who employ them generally pay
Cruising The Souk
. Prostitution is often tolerated as "being good for tourism", though a crackdown this week netted over two hundred, mostly Chinese, prostitutes and pimps who will eventually be deported. But then, Aspen was built on cheap labor and had a booming brothel business during the Silver mining boom of the late 1800's. There are plenty of other things to do in Dubai to keep visitors busy for several days. The most interesting part of the city is the area around what is known as The Creek. The Creek is a bit of a misnomer as it is really an inlet off of the gulf that extends fourteen kilometers inland. It was dredged in the twentieth century to make it easier for trading vessels to make their way into more usable port areas. The area has several museums, one of them in the old fort, including the former home of the Al Maktoum family. The museum houses an outstanding collection of old black and white photographs of Dubai in the days before development as well as a large number of photos of the various royal families dating back to the 1800's.
The old souks, or markets still stand as a reminder of the old ways of doing business and are located next to The Creek. There is also a spice souk and a gold souk, where sheiks, sheikas and tourists from around the world all hunt for bargains in a market that dates its beginnings to illicit trade with the Indian sub-continent.
