Going up the Chair Lift at Har Khermon

On Shabbat, we decided to go up to Har Khermon (Mt. Hermon). This time, the chair lift was operating, so we paid our 40 shekels each and took it up the mountain. Since I'm not a skier, I had never been on a chair lift before. That was an interesting experience in itself!

Here's a picture that I took about half way up:

This is a view from the top, looking down to the lower station:

We hiked a little distance from the upper station, and this is the view looking back towards it. The large building on the left is where we got off the lift.
I had hoped that we would be able to get some good views deep into Syria, but there are peaks a short distance to the east and southeast (with military bases on them!) that block the view. I suspect that from at least one of those bases, though, it would be possible to see Damascus!

Even though Spring is long gone now in most of northern Israel, we saw a few flowers way up high on the mountain (about 7000 ft above sea level). This thistle was only a short distance from where I took that last picture.

Here's another beautiful flower that we saw up there:

And here are some more. These are actually quite small:

Here's the view from the chair lift coming down, not long before we got to the lower station:

And, finally, here are some pretty hollyhocks that were blooming near the lower station: