Cooling Off, Dubai Style (Part 1)

So summer temperatures in the Persian/Arab Gulf region are regularly in mid-40s Celsius (~110 Fahrenheit), and sometimes jump up to the high forties (approaching 120). Back in June, after a visit to the US, I landed and the pilot announced that the outside temperature was 117 degrees Fahrenheit. It varies from place to place, but is usually inversely correlated to the humidity. Dubai is slightly cooler than inland Saudi Arabia, for example, but the humidity makes it worse. I have heard that southern Iraq and Kuwait are the worst because they're both humid and super hot.

The Gulf water itself reaches temperatures above 90 degrees so going to the beach and jumping in the water doesn't offer much relief. However, Dubai has in its ridiculous manner developed a solution: Snow. After all, snow can't heat up or it turns to water. So when things get too hot here, we just hit the ski slopes at the local Mall of the Emirates.

I recruited my friend Tim and we hit up the slopes so that I could fulfill my lifelong dream of learning to snowboard in July. (OK it's only been my dream for the last couple of months). It was strange putting on my running tights and long sleeved rowing shirt when it was 117 degrees outside! SkiDubai is, by actual ski slope standards, pretty small (think Chickadee at Snowbird then shrink it to a tenth of that size). However, it's indoors so it's an amazing hill. The entire thing is kept a few degrees below freezing all the time, and at night artificial snow is added to keep it snow friendly. Your lift ticket (around $50) includes the snowboard / ski rental, along with boots, snow pants, and parka. They also have a glove and hat store.

Now I've been skiing my entire life, and grew up in a house in Utah that was less than 30 minutes from about 7 different world class ski resorts, so even for the 2 hour ticket I was bound to get bored. However, in spite of always wanting to give it a try, I have never been snowboarding. Every time I've had the opportunity to try it in Utah I have always figured that I didn't want to waste a good ski day to learn to snowboard. So, ironically, I tried it out for the first time in the hot July desert heat.

Needless to say I thought this would be fairly easy. I have been wakeboarding before. I'm not used to feeling like I'm completely and utterly uncoordinated, but this was one case. The first attempt down the mountain was one constant FAIL, sometimes on my keyster and sometimes on my face. This, of course, was much to the amusement of the other 100 or so people in the facility. Unlike most ski resorts, where you can find someplace fairly isolated and away from the lift, at SkiDubai the whole hill is right under the lift, so you always have lots of witnesses to your falls to provide encouragement and / or mockery. At one point after a nice faceplant I looked up and saw between my snow-frosted eyelashes that the source of one particularly loud outburst of laughter was coming from four pre-teen Arab girls on the lift.

As if being a Utah boy learning to snowboard in Dubai wasn't ironic enough, being a Utah boy getting made fun of by some 12 year old girls in hijabs for not knowing how to snowboard took the irony to a whole new level. These girls weren't even there to ski OR snowboard! They were there to experience the novelty of snow, and never got off the lift!

I felt so good about myself.

We had part of this run on video but it was too large to upload. Thanks to Tim for taking the pictures and providing me with some good coaching. Each run I gradually improved, and by the end of my 2 hour session could actually make it down the mountain without falling, though that was if I stuck to a "falling leaf" pattern on the heelside of the board. Toeside was a different story, as it usually ended in a faceplant, but towards the end I made a couple of toeside turns before running out of time. All in all though, I claim victory.

Perhaps the best part about skiing in the mall is that you don't have to deal with ski traffic when you leave. In fact, you just return your rented gear and walk back out to the food court and get TGIF or Chilis or whatever other you might get a hankering for. We ate, then marched across the hall to the cinema to see Inception. I wonder if this entire place is just one big dream and Leonardo DiCaprio is using it to steal something from my mind...