A Test Run at Russia’s Olympic Hopeful

Written By Unknown on Sabtu, 21 Desember 2013 | 17.35

Andy Isaacson for The New York Times

Snowboarders at Rosa Khutor near Sochi, Russia.

Before I could board the gondola at Rosa Khutor, a ski area that is part of Sochi, the site of next year's Winter Olympics, I first had to trundle through a metal detector manned by Russian soldiers with machine guns and furry hats. This is not something I'm used to. At chairlifts in the American West, where I typically ski, you find cheerful young attendants who are stoked to be on their feet all day because that's what it takes to live the dream.

Unlike those armed soldiers, Sasha Krasnov, a local guide I'd arranged to meet, would be at home in the Rockies. Twenty-seven and shaggy haired, he is a self-identified "free rider" — an off-piste skier. A storm had delivered two feet of fresh snow overnight, ending a long dry spell, and Sasha, his head tucked under a dirt bike helmet, was as giddy as a child on Christmas morning.

The gondola ferried us out of the base area, high above an Italianate clock tower built with an oligarch's money, across a birch forest stippled with powder. Thick clouds obscured my view, so I unfolded a trail map, which was entirely in Russian. On it, I could see that Rosa Khutor was laid out much like a European resort, with a series of chairlifts linking the river valley, at 1,800 feet, with a craggy, treeless summit at 7,612 feet. As in the Alps, the resort takes a laissez-faire approach to marking trails. Only a handful had designated names, which weren't helpful anyway, unless you read Cyrillic or had a knack for symbol recognition. I wondered aloud whether any rope or signage designated the resort's boundary.

"No rope!" Sasha replied with a knowing smile. "This is Russia."

Vladimir Putin may be better known as a judo master and shirtless fisherman, but come winter, when snow coats the onion domes atop St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, the Russian president heads for the slopes. The Wikipedia entry for ski suit, in fact, features an image not of the Olympic stars Lindsey Vonn or Bode Miller but of Mr. Putin, wearing the red two-piece uniform of Russia's national team. On his personal website, he declares skiing "a dynamic sport that requires mastering a technique, and is a great opportunity for an active holiday, to stay fit and get a boost of energy and good spirits."

He also claims to prefer skiing in Russia. Until recently, however, there was little the country offered a foreign skier seeking an active holiday, never mind those good spirits. Russia's tallest peaks are along its southern border with Georgia, in the Caucasus mountain range. The mountains stretch diagonally in a belt from the Black Sea, east to the Caspian. The tallest of them, Mount Elbrus, reaches higher than any in the rest of Europe, with an elevation of 18,500 feet. But beyond some heli-skiing operations, the handful of ski areas dating from the Soviet era hardly justified an Aeroflot ticket.

Not surprisingly, then, wealthy Russians have preferred skiing the Alps. Around a decade ago, the Russian government decided that there was no reason they needed to lose those vacation rubles to Switzerland, France and Italy. They flew in a mountain resort developer from Whistler, British Columbia, Paul Mathews, to evaluate the potential of the Caucasus for winter tourism. Mr. Mathews looked at the jagged ridgelines surrounding the sleepy village of Krasnaya Polyana, nestled in a river valley above Sochi, a city of about 400,000; at the long, deep gulleys that tumbled down from them; at the region's glaciated bowls and gentle plateaus. It reminded him of Les Trois Vallées in France, among the world's largest linked ski areas. Mr. Mathews drafted some plans, and in 2002, Interros, a conglomerate controlled by Vladimir Potanin, one of Russia's richest men, and Gazprom, the world's largest natural-gas producer, began building ski resorts.

Situated on the Black Sea, Sochi has a pleasant, temperate climate that has lured Russians to seaside sanitariums since the days of Stalin. The palm trees there can almost fool you into believing you're in another country. "Sochi is a unique place," Mr. Putin told the International Olympic Committee in his winning pitch to host the 2014 Games. "On the seashore, you can enjoy a fine spring day — but up in the mountains, it's winter."

When I flew into Sochi last March, joined by my friend Than, it was neither springlike nor fine. The late-winter storm, which had diverted our flight from Moscow the previous night, cast a gray and despondent mood over the subtropical city. We took a taxi to Krasnaya Polyana, an hourlong trip up a winding, two-lane road, through the gorge of the Mzymta River. (A new highway and high-speed railway, being built across the river, will cut the travel time in half.)

Andy Isaacson is a writer and photographer in New York.  His most recent cover article for Travel was on RV subculture.


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