Ski Bamiyan

We've been having an incredible time skiing the Koh-e-Baba and working with communities and aspiring tour guides on the potential for future ski tourism here.  Spring is now in full swing now, lots of ploughing and planting, and budding leaves, but still good snow in the mountains.  Check out some Bamiyan ski photos in the slide show (FYI- if you click on the pics to the right they should get bigger).  I'm also continuing with UNEP and Chad has taken another consultancy with AKF developing curriculum for the new Sustainable Land Management Institute, a cooperative effort between NGOs and Bamiyan University.  The problem with this other work is it's getting in the way of skiing, something I know you can appreciate.  Photos include lots of skiing, community mapping to identify place names, explaining skiing to communities, kids trying skiing, researching routes (GPS, lots of notes), a big avalanche that closed a local road for 3 weeks (and that people dug out with shovels), kids and their sleds (kids love sledding, called yakh molak, and we've joined in a few times), skis that we had made here in the bazaar by local carpenters, the New Year ski competition which attracted 200-300 folks along with the one Afghan family that has skied consistently for the last 40 years, a pair of this family's skis from the 60s, migrating geese, and a 3-day ski trip to some great terrain including small but impressive glaciers.  We're planning a few more multi-day trips for the spring that we hope will include donkey support.  We loaded up donkeys with skis for the first time last week to head back to snow (spring melt at lower elevations now), which was great.  We've had some good publicity from Afg radio and TV as well as German radio and print, and last week, the UK Guardian.  Get your calendars out for your 2011 Bamiyan ski vacation.  Or maybe 2015.