Skiing in the Hermon

This past weekend I had one of those typical teenage experiences. You know the ones where you pick up spontaneously and embark upon some epic trip without a true idea of what you're doing or how you're going to do it.

In this instance, the destination that my friend and I had in mind was Mt. Hermon with the objective of going skiing. On Wednesday, after deciding (rather unreasonably) that there was surely enough snow on the mountain, we got a hotel recommendation, booked a room for two nights, packed up our things, and headed off the next morning for Neve Ativ.

It was a long day of travelling on Thursday, but we somehow managed to make it to Neve Ativ. We found the hotel, checked into our room, dropped off our stuff, and headed to the ski shop to rent our equipment.

The ski shop was a funny place, with absolutely none of the paperwork you have to fill out at an American rental store. We just gave them our money, and they handed us a pair of boots, skis, and poles.

The next morning we woke up pretty early in an attempt to get to the slopes right when they opened at 8. As often happens with these things, we got out the door a little late. Still, we made it to the slopes in time to experience the joy of the first (and very icy) run of the day, and were confident that we were going to have a good day of skiing ahead of us.

The conditions on the mountain definitely weren't ideal. The amount of snow was minimal and icy in the morning. That is, until the sun warmed it up and it just became really wet and started to melt, exposing rocks and some large patches of dirt. But, it was awesome to be out there. Mt. Hermon is a very cute ski mountain and we had a good time fantasizing about how much fun it would be to hit the slopes on a day when there was a couple more feet of snow and even (because you can be picky in your imagination) six inches of fresh powder.

At the end of the day we were exhausted but content, and definitely ready for an après-ski hot tub session. We ended our day with a late dinner and a movie on our hotel room TV.

The next day was a bit more relaxing. Convinced that the way the mountain looked at the end of the day Friday would make it un-skiable on Saturday, we decided to pack a picnic lunch and go for a hike. We really only "hiked" for 20 minutes before we found the perfect grassy knoll to take a nap on. The day was beautiful, and we had an amazing view down into the Golan.

Eventually we had to make it back into Neve Ativ to catch our bus to Qiryat Shemona and begin the long journey back to Jerusalem. Like all great things, our wonderful weekend vacation came to an end. It was amazingly fun, and to say that I just took off for a ski vacation in the Hermon really makes my year here that much more rewarding.