"Skiing in the Middle East" a Lebanon Mountains Travel Page by Veghel

I visited Baalbek and Anjar in the autumn of 2000. Driving from Damascus through the Bekaa valley in northern direction, I saw beautiful mountains on my left hand side. The tour guide told about some skiing facilities... As an addicted skier, the first thing I did when I came back home was looking on the internet. I found information about several Lebanese ski resorts, of which Faraya Mzaar was said to be the best (with The Cedars in second place). Based on the 2000 internet information, I thought it would be nice to ski in Lebanon some day. I placed it on my "to visit list", with medium priority. January 2006 I convinced my wife that it was the right time to go and we booked our ski trip to Faraya Mzaar for 3 to 12 March 2006. And it was in one word marvellous! If you're a skier and interested, I invite you to read my subpages.

Although the village looks very beautiful on this picture, it is not as attractive as some places in Switzerland and Austria. Faraya Mzaar mainly consists of apartment buildings with very few bars, restaurants and shops (except for the Intercontinental hotel). Most buildings do not look too bad however, and some are even beautifully designed.

From every place on the slopes of Faraya Mzaar, you can see Mount Lebanon; which is the tallest mountain of the country. The picture on the left was taken after a period of two weeks with high temperatures, lots of sunshine and no fresh snow. A few days later, the weather god dumped about 70 cm of fresh snow. As a result, the view changed completely as all brown surfaces became white again. If you look carefully, you may see some of the famous cedar trees -- the national symbol of Lebanon -- right in the middle and on the left of the picture.