My dad came to Israel for a visit, and we decided to go up to Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights to do some skiing/snowboarding. It's only a 3 hour drive from Tel Aviv so we figured it was worth the trip. The skiing conditions weren't great. There was lots of ice and exposed rocks. There was little visibility at the top and half of the mountain was closed. We took the same ski lift up every time and basically alternated going left or right. But just the simple fact that I was snowboarding in the Middle East made this a worthwhile trip.
There is something special about skiing on the Hermon, a highly contested high point just on the Israel-Syria border. On the way up, we stopped in Majdal Shams, a Druze village, and ate a delicious Druze pita with zatar and labane.
And what other ski resort in the world can you whiz by a guy carrying an M-16?
Since it was the middle of the week, we had the mountain basically to ourselves, with the exception of a special unit of the Israeli army. They are known here as the "alpinistim." They are an extreme weather unit that learn how to ski and shoot at the same time. They probably have a better chance of using this skill in a James Bond movie than in an actual war. By the way, the guys on the mountain that day were newbies, so they weren't very good skiers yet. (Note to Syria: Now is the time to send in your elite snowboard halfpipe team on a top-secret mission!)
I invited them for apres-ski on the condition that they wouldn't being any live ammunition into the sauna