A taste of Tbilisi Architecture

Just thought I'd throw up some pix of my trip around Tbilisi this afternoon. Lots of Soviet influence.
Enjoy.

Svaneti ski championships. Now with pictures.

   

First off, some pictures.

 Skis from the grand Hotel Ushba

 lots of cocoa

Day 1 Svaneti Championships

        Originally, the only reason I made reservations at Grand Hotel Ushba was for the Svaneti Championship ski races (15km classic, 30km pursuit on the 2^nd day). I awoke on Saturday to rain on the metal roof, and started thinking about klister. I scrape travel wax off the skis we brought for donation, and have a delicious breakfast of Svan yoghurt and scrambled eggs and bread and jam. Kids start filtering in around 10. The power is out (a common occurrence but of little consequence), so start lists are hand-copied. A dozen men sit outside playing with spark plugs from the snowmobile and try to get a chinese generator started, but soon switch tasks to starting a fire and making a huge cauldron of hot cocoa. Skis are hauled to the aptly named “Ushba Stadium”, and a wave of J2-J3 boys goes off for a 5k. A large number of the 700 Becho valley inhabitants walk a few km to watch and cheer the skiers in the rain. The course is very soft and slushy, with a no rest on the entire 2.5km. A struggle to stay moving. I start at 12:45 and finish the 15km workout in an hour. I feel bad passing the field on the first lap, but with a minute or more on everyone it feels nice to relax and ski in the rain. A few older girls decide to race a 10km. They exhibit the top of Svan ski fashion: jeans, skirts, striped cotton sweatshirts, ipod-knockoffs. All are out cheering, drinking hot cocoa, and skiing laps up and down the hill to the village of Tvebish.

     When the last girl finishes, the conversation moves inside. Svans have all day to congregate and converse, and slowly filter inside the restaurant, surrounding the wood stoves in the main room and the kitchen. Every time I enter either room I am offered a seat close to the fire, to refuse tests my minor skills in the Georgian language as kids are scared to show off their pretty-good English skills. Every participant receives a diploma for participating, and I get a Becho Sport Club hat for winning my 15km race. All the adults who helped out get hats as well, and people start filtering home for dinner.

 one of the many dogs of Svaneti

 end of the day

Day 2 Svaneti Championships

      Awake to fresh powder with more snow coming down. Another delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, svan yogurt, and tea. I strip klister off yesterday's skis and show some of the kids how to cork VR60 for the near-freezing temps. Zero skis would be amazing, but in an area where all the skis are donated and kept at the hotel, something so new is a far-off reality. The area does have 1-2 meters of snow by Thanksgiving though, so if a team came to ski for early season altitude training newer skis might be possible. I watch as one of the brothers in the family prepares the ski track using a snowmobile that somehow made its way from Woodford, Vermont to Svaneti. The hotel has a Norwegian track setter, and the skate track is set using a pair of scraped logs strung together by wire. The track gets smoothed by stomping with skis on; earlier in the season the entire 2.5km race loop was packed out by the village children wearing boots.

The race starts late because the snowmobile is out of petrol, but luckily the generator has the right mix so some is siphoned off. A 30km mens pursuit is first, and I take off on some old RCSs we're donating to Becho Sport Club. Wax is iffy at best with fresh snow near freezing over rain crust, but skis seem to be working fine. I finish the first of 12 laps in the lead, and continue a nice tempo workout for the whole race. Turns out the closest competitor stopped for some coffee midway through. A classic Georgian idea in a place where people wish to get paid a salary to sit around and drink and smoke and work a bit.

      Other races proceed with large breaks in between. 10 km for J2 and J3s may be the longest race they've ever done, but everyone finished in style. Skating is a bit difficult on the soft track, and classic skis and only a few months ski experience don't help. But times are respectable at under an hour, and one young girl even finishes the 10km (three started, but two were on small kids skis and literally ran on the skis until falling and heading back to the stadium).

     It is amazing to see all the kindergarten-aged kids playing on skis and the older ones skiing laps, running down to the river on skis, and skating on old fishscale touring skis. Bill Koch league minus the skiing parents and new gear and matching jackets. When off skis, typical fighting and intense arm wrestling seems to be the daily routine, with a few hours of school thrown in. Some of the skis have a healthy dose of animal hair of all sorts mixed in with the wax, so the skis make some rounds of the villages and animal paths that dot the valley. Walking 3km is no issue, so skiing 5 or 10k likely is not either. With a bit of running and the spenst training the kids have been looking at in the Norwegian ski magazine Ute, a promising group of skiers can keep growing. You can help by showing up at the Grand Hotel Ushba for training, hiking, or skiing and bringing some expertise or gear.

Big Svaneti Ski Update- Skiing Ushba and Hatsvali

First, some pictures of the skiing in Svaneti. Get pumped. Or email benski123@gmail.com for info, beta, contacts, ...

Awesome corn turns

A very welcome sight

typical svan village

final part of our bushwack back to the grand hotel ushba

President Saakashvili's suite at Hotel Hatsvali

typical Georgian store

Steeps all around on Ushba South

 Eric and I above Mazeri

Ushba, more skiing
I tell Roza that I am leaving early, and she takes it well. I get a ride from Vito, the manager at Hotel Hatsvali. Just back from working in hospitality in Holland, he speaks English and has some business smarts. We talk skiing, politics, and business management. Hotel Hatsvali used to be President Saakashvili's home, but has since turned into a rather unsuccessful hotel. Last season, minibuses went to Hatsvali every hour, and the restaurant at Hotel Hatsvali was full with excess seating on the floor. But this season has been very bad for business. Now that Saakasvili is not in power, advertising and flights have gone down, and few skiers, Georgian or otherwise, are visiting the slopes. It is amazing they are even open midweek.
Around noon on Thursday the lifts finally open. I expect to see Kate and Eric hop out of the yellow minibus that transports employees to Hatsvali, but apparently they were denied a ride. Georgians have a relaxed way of life and seem to work only when necessary; maybe the employees wanted to get paid for hanging out in the lift shack. Anyways, Richard and the other employees at Grand Hotel Ushba showed up in their Chamonix bus, and Kate and Eric popped out too. A few inches of snow had fallen on top of the groomed crust, so we had beautiful skiing on and off piste all day. Grabbed some beers at Vito's, then headed out for a few more laps while the nets for Saturday and Sunday's Svaneti Cross-Country Ski Championships were offloaded in Mazeri.
Eric and Kate had first dinner at Nino's guesthouse, while I went shopping in town and searched for cute dogs to take pictures of. The dogs in Mestia are amazing creatures, ranging from small mutts to massive shepherds and huskies. Along with cows, pigs, horses, and chickens, they form the majority of Mestia's street population.
We arrive around 8pm at Grand Hotel Ushba, and have a wonderful meal of beef stew, Svan pancakes, and Georgian wine. Pass out with plans to wake around 7:40 for a big ski tour. We discuss our options of relatively slide-free day tours, and end up choosing a ridge of Ushba at around 3400 meters. Start skinning from the porch, then bootpack through Mazeri village and up the path and road towards the summer farm. A few hundred meters in, the road becomes snow-filled, and we start one of the best skins I've ever done. Full sun, views of the Svaneti and Greater Caucasus ranges with peaks up to 4700 meters, and a gradual track that I would be scared to drive up but which skins very efficiently. We stop several times for food and water, each time turning around in a daze. We are surrounded by mountains and peaks, with beautiful views and potential lines and first descents in every direction. We take a test run of a thousand or more vertical feet; in the process I lose I ski (failed to clean mud out of my tech fittings) and slide down on one ski to where the ski has luckily stopped at a gully intersection. Others are getting tired, so I set the skin track and we gain the final snow-covered ridge of Ushba's south summit. We discuss lines, and ski the central ridge for a while. Far skiers right would have gone but was exposed to lots of slide paths, with debris in the middle. Steeper, but deposits directly onto the road back to the valley floor.
Our turns are georgous and perfect angle until treeline. The downside to avoiding the cliff bands in the center and slide paths far right is a bunch of birches, slide debris, rocks, and streams. We release wet slides and strip the ground of snow, then suffer bootpacking and side-slipping through hundreds of meters of steeps and thick shrubs. At dusk, we make it to the road, too tired to do anything but snowplow. An awesome crust ski back through potato fields and pastures provides a great finish to the day. Dinner of the best cabbage I've ever had, some Svan potatoes, and pork topped off with applesauce and tea.