North Korea’s new ski resort is officially opened for business. The resort opened it’s doors on January 1 and is now hosting international visitors. CNN brings us this first look at North Korea’s New Ski Resort.
Koryo Tours has shared a blog on what to expect if you are planing a trip to Masik Pass Ski Resort.
“So, hotel first; it’s very fancy and comfortable, has 120 rooms in two buildings and is dotted with so many bars and cafes that a crawl around them all would take days in itself! The restaurants here seem well equipped and offer a range of options, best to go with Korean food of course but they also offer some European options in addition. The leisure facilities at the hotel are also quite impressive, a cavelike Karaoke room, billiard tables, areas for playing chess as well are all available. The 25m swimming pool is very nice and has a playing pool (aimed at Children, but there weren’t any in there so it was being used as a Jacuzzi for adults), as well as a brutally hot steam room and a more relaxing dry sauna.
But the main attraction here is the skiing itself, having had a small amount of ski experience only I’m no expert in what makes somewhere necessarily superior to somewhere else but I have been to some winter Olympic ski runs before and this stands up very well with those; there are a total of 9 ski runs, the longest is over 5km! ON day 1 I tried out a red Run which I made it down, about 25% of which was on my backside though! More appropriate for my level was what the call here the upper beginners slope, which can be used on skis, board, or in a rubber ring, the latter may be less dignified but it was a whole lot of fun!
The number of local Korean skiers here was also a great surprise, considering that prior to a fortnight ago there was just one ski slope in the country, and in a very remote and hard to reach area… I saw a wide range of abilities and ages of skiers on display here, there were something like 200 visitors this day, mostly coming from the nearby East Coast city of Wonsan, this is far from the 5000 daily visitors projected initially but it is actually about 200 more than I first expected, and the skill levels of some people there who when asked claimed to have learned in just a couple of weeks, was very impressive. Masik-Ryong speed indeed!
The much-reported ski-lift issue seems to have been resolved with the use of Chinese made lifts, they are not the fastest but they get you to the top, and the morning view from the very top of the mountain is stunning, visitors are welcome to side to the top for photos even if they don’t want to ski all the way down (the shortest run from the very top is still over a mile).” Keep reading at Koryo Tours
