Luxist Visits Ski Dubai, The World's Largest Indoor Ski Area
Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels, Sports, Architecture & Design

Sipping a cup of hot chocolate beneath a heat lamp on the deck of the cozy mountainside Avalanche Café, it's easy to forget that you're in the middle of the desert in Dubai. That is, until you see a pack of bearded men gleefully whizzing down the slope, white tunics billowing like sails behind them.
Any excursion to Ski Dubai, which purports to be the world's largest indoor ski area, is filled with this sort of incongruity. Though the air outside routinely tops 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, the temperature inside the 22,500 square meter facility remains just below freezing all year round. The structure that encloses the ski slope is as tall as a 25-story building; its flagship trail, the first indoor black diamond ever built, is longer than three football fields. There are four other runs of varying difficulty, as well as a chairlift, a freestyle snowboarding zone, and of course, the aforementioned café.

Chili's Waitress Fired Over Facebook Post Insulting 'Stupid Cops'
Forbidden America: Cold War-Era Map Shows No-Go Zones For Soviet Tourists
Tenants: Stench of Death Makes St. Louis Complex 'Unlivable'
Man Takes Dump In Background Of Instructional Workout Video
Billboard Music Awards: Worst Dressed (or Most Daring?) From Past Red Carpets
Taylor Swift Q and A: What Does She Splurge on in Las Vegas?
Ricardo Cerezo, Facing Eviction, Finds $4.85 Million Lottery Ticket
MIT's cheetah robot runs faster, more efficiently, can carry its own power supply (video)
Forever 21 Worker Fired After She Tells Her Traumatic Story
HSBC Plans 14,000 More Job Cuts