“Should we go?” Chad Sayers and Forrest Coots decide, indeed, they should. Upon arriving in Iran, they are welcomed with profound warmth, stunned by the immense beauty of the landscape and culture. Threaded through Tehran’s bustling bazaars to Isfahan’s dazzling mosques, the two skiers get a glimpse at the complex dichotomy that divides public and private lives in Iran. As journalist Elaine Sciolino writes, “Iran can be dazzling, and light-filled, a reflection of its complexities; but it can also be cold, confusing, and impenetrable.” To travel to Iran is a reminder of the virtues of travel itself. Nothing is as it first appears. At private ski chalets atop slopes of the Alborz and Zagros mountains, rules and customs relent.

Skiing as sport is in it’s infancy in China, a phenomenon of the country’s exploding middle class. As a means of survival, however, it is thousands of years old, a stone age hunter-gatherer technology born in the Altai mountains where China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan
and Siberia merge. On a vast trajectory that spans 11,000km of Northern China, Chad Sayers and Forrest Coots touch down into the rich past and dizzying future of these two respective Chinese ski cultures. As one rapidly expands, they find the other is at risk
of disappearing.