Snowboarding In The Caucasus Mountains…

Well, not me snowboarding, but Yuri went for a week recently and I wanted to share some of his pictures with you.  The area he was in is located in Russia, a short distance from the border with Georgia. The village he stayed in is called Dumbuy. He went with a small group of people and he was about a nine hour drive from Lugansk.
Here is the village from levels one and two of the ski lifts.  Some amazing views!

    

There is a new lift at the ski resort.  It holds six seat lift chairs. Yuri was pretty excited to try out the new lift.

    

These are amazing.  The mountains are about the same height as the Colorado Rockies.  Before he left we were curious about the elevation comparisons so we looked it up.  It was pretty cool!

     

    

    

The old tram and the new tram…  Yuri tells me that even today the old fits about 20 people and the new only fits ten, but seriously, I don’t know if I could do the old style.

   

The village of Dumbuy.  There are only about 1000 permanent residents and the resident numbers seriously increase during the winter months.  A Russian Visa is expensive and a lot of paperwork to get, but this would be a great place to visit in the winter time.  There is talk about visiting Georgia instead, no visa needed…yeh!

The big and grey hotel is closed now, but at one time it is the pride and joy of the village.  It is an old Soviet funded resort style hotel for the once upperly mobile.  It houses an indoor swimming pool and restaurant, both luxuries for a hotel in the Soviet period.  The wood, and to me, German looking hotel is the place where Yuri stayed.  All the rooms have balconies and it seemed like a great place.  Your average mountain hotel.

    

One of my favorite pictures in the bunch.  This was the view from Yuri’s hotel room balcony.  Amazing!!!



A big thanks to Yuri for letting me ‘borrow’ his pictures and share them with all of you!