Skiing in the desert
RAMESH SETH
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Once a destination for beach holidays, today Dubai offers skiing as an option.
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IN THE MALL: Ski resort.
Last November on a visit to Dubai my wife and I went to see the Mall of the Emirates. Apart from it being the biggest Mall outside North America it also houses an indoor skiing resort. Hitherto an outdoor sport of snowbound mountain slopes in the winter season, thanks to human ingenuity it is now an indoor sport. The area under snow in the Mall is the equivalent to three football pitches. The ski slope runs inside a giant, slanting metal tube, which is approximately 25 floors high. The ski slope is 300 metres long to provide maximum thrill to skiers. The longest indoor ski slope in the world, it is built inside what is basically a large freezer.
Indoor sport
The ideal temperature to make snow should not be higher than - 3 degrees Celsius. Add to this the chill wind while skiing at 25 to 30 mph and it can be very cold. Therefore a person has to be properly and warmly dressed, and appropriate clothing and equipment provided at the entry for a fee of $35. The snow is made by shooting water at high pressure into the atmosphere that is maintained at around freezing point by coolers both below and above the slopes. It is estimated that every day about 7,500 tons of snow is injected onto the ski slopes.
There are windows through which you can watch the skiers. It resembles a typical ski resort with cable cars and lift chairs to take the skiers to the top of the slope. Until now Dubai has been a destination for warm beach holidays, but now it is also a popular ski resort.
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