YOUR SPECIAL PLACE, NOW MORE SPECIAL.

480 ACRES OF NEW TERRAIN IN WEST BOWL AND THE NEW SUMMIT CHAIR TO GET YOU THERE

It wasn’t Lasha with whom I had been corresponding for months organizing our family’s February adventure; it was Ilia Berulava. As the country’s first IFMGA mountain guide, Ilia is also co-founder of the Georgia Guide Office, which represents 20 mountain and ski guides from its HQ in Svaneti, our next stop in this fascinating country.

Our arduous and gritty 11-hour drive around South Ossetia and its mined border took us into Georgia’s subtropical vineyards and farmland with leather-faced men in cool hats on horseback, through towns of weathered wooden cottages and small cities with decaying but still fascinating Soviet apartment blocks, and finally a spectacular, twisty-turny and bumpy drive up tight steep valleys with few guard rails above massive hydro-electric reservoirs. When we return, we might consider flying one way into Kutaisi, which has a much closer international airport to Svaneti. However, the capital of Tbilisi is well worth visiting, and on the way from Mestia an eerie overnight stop at the HIGHLY recommended and mostly abandoned Soviet spa town of Tskaltubo as well as a bizarre stroll through the Stalin museum in the dictator’s birthplace of Gori are must-do’s.

By the time we fell out of Nico’s little (and for no apparent reason, right-hand drive) Japanese minivan, we were so happy to meet Ilia I expected him to be overwhelmed, but the affable, funny new friend passed the MacMillan test with flying colours. He made us feel as if we’d known him for years, and we were soon sitting down for a delicious dinner at the newly renovated Hotel Posta of traditional khinkali dumplings, ostri (spicy beef stew) and shkmeruli (garlic chicken) while peppering him with questions. Although we couldn’t get Ilia to sing or dance, we learnt later in the week just how cool he was when he casually mentioned being struck by lightning on a mountainside several years ago.

At 4,858m Tetnuldi and its colossal glaciers tower above the seven villages that make up Mestia at around 1,500m. The four-year-old ski resort of the same name was new in 2016 and has five lifts that currently start at 2,265m and top out at 3,160. Like Gudauri, the freeride and touring terrain roams as far up, down and around as the eye can see. The enchanted region that Mestia sits in, Svaneti, gets snow—big snow—so skiing past the lowest lift to one of the seven villages in the valley that make up Mestia will give you a nearly 1,700-verticalmetre run; you and your guide can decide how much to add with your skins, and at such dizzying elevations, the sky’s literally the limit.

Known for its massive alpine splendour and hundreds of tower houses, many that date back to the 8th century, Svaneti (the v is pronounced like our w) has its own unique, unwritten language, culture and fierce history. Svans sing complicated a cappella or polyphonic songs. And they’re highland warriors from villages too difficult to surround with protective walls so it was up to each family to build its own six-storey fortress from which to throw stuff Monty Python-style at marauders.

With one scene more magical than the next, we collectively took thousands of photos over the next few days of skiing and skinning slackcountry off the lifts of nearby Tetnuldi, and full days of touring on the flanks of other enormous peaks. Ilia’s itinerary included a night in the remote village of Ushguli (2,100m), about 10 km from Russia, and a day of ski-touring all more spectacular than the last. Sleep came on quickly after vast amounts of exercise combined with overeating from a feast spread out at the dinner table and finished with shots of chacha. What some call “Georgian vodka” of course is made with grapes. No surprise given we were in the country that gave the world wine.

I never find the mesmerizing, almost hypnotic sequence that is ski-touring monotonous. The one-foot-after-another routine allows me to collect my often-scrambled thoughts; I’m away from electronics, work, pestering people… Sometimes tunes run through my head, other times the silence accompanied by the rhythmic swish-and-slide sounds are lulling.

Touring with the MacMillan girls, not so much. Maybe it just comes down to having three of a kind, but Ray and I produced a noisy lot. “It’s cold!” “I’m SO hot!” “Those pants make you look fat.” “Wait, are you wearing my shirt!?” “What song are you singing?” “Remember that episode in The Office when…?” “Tell us about your girlfriend, Ilia.” Through all the high-elevation huffing and puffing there’s singing, non-stop chatter, stupid questions, laughter… Passing someone on or near the skin track almost always involves full-contact checking.

“Whoa! What’s that double-summit, Ilia?” “Ushba, 4,710 metres.”

“And over there?”

“Shkara, 5,193.”

“Oy! That one, that one!”

“That’s Russia! That’s Elbrus, 5,642.”

I look at my iPhone. We’re too close to the border for the GPS to place me on a map. I’m also getting a warning about roaming rates in Russia. So cool.

Some guides we’ve skied with in the past don’t know what hit them when the five of us show up. Thankfully Ilia was not only patient and flexible, he had a quick sense of humour. We were soon fighting in our little van over who got to sit next to the Georgian hipster who took a lightning bolt to the shoulder and summited every peak we could see.