THE VILLAGE OF SHEMSHAK, like most any Iranian town, has as its primary place of worship an impressive building of spindly spires and onion domes known as an imamzadeh. What most foreigners, myself included, assume to be a mosque is actually a Shiite shrine containing holy relics.

I asked Farshad to bring me here out of curiosity, but like nearly every experience we've had in the Alborz, we've ended up circling back to the snow. Inside, he spots a friend, telling me in a whisper, "He is very famous in this zone."

The man is Mostafa Mirhashemi, 32, Iran's foremost nordic skier. He represented Iran at the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, rounding out the country's team of two athletes. Mostafa missed last year's Turin Games, but Iran had a capable backup: his older brother Mojtaba, who is 41.

Nordic skiing is the rarest snow sport of all here—it exists almost exclusively for the smattering of men who compete in the national-team pool. Like all of the country's top skiers, Mostafa and Mojtaba get little support from the government. For the most part, the brothers make do with club sponsorships and side jobs. They raise bees for honey, give lessons, and rent and sell ski equipment at a small shop in town. Mostafa takes great pride in these mountains and what they offer to Iranians.

"After the revolution, it was difficult for women to ski," he says. "Now it's much easier. This makes me happy to see."

An older woman in a chador comes over and chatters in Farsi. It's Mostafa's mother, urging her son to invite us to their home to look at photographs.

We hop into Mostafa's red van and head down the narrow valley road to their house. A cluster of shops hugs a bend in the road, and Mostafa pulls in, parks, and leads us down a lane. To one side is a steep hill covered in snow. "When I was two, I skied here," he says. "I carried my skis to the top."

We enter a small foyer, remove our shoes, and walk up some steps into a warm room empty of furnishings but full of children—two boys and two girls, all of them small, giggle at our presence. Every one of them, Mostafa says, is a skier.

In the corner of the room, there's evidence of a proud mother: The fireplace mantel is decorated with trophies, medals, and race credentials. We drink tea and look at pictures, and the experience is touching and telling. Here's a man in his thirties, living with his parents and devoting himself to a sport that, in Iran, barely exists at all. The mountain villages are full of people like this. As the ski federation's Bahram Shemshaki told me, "In Shemshak and Dizin, before they walk, they learn to ski."

At the same time, you've got a large group of hipsters from Tehran using the ski resorts as a way to experiment with freedom, to intermingle and express themselves with thick mascara, pink cargos, and techno music delivered by iPod.

The groups intersect in ski shops and cafés, like the one down the hill from my Shemshak hotel. Outside, it's drab. Inside, there's the vibe of modern ski lodge, complete with Red Bull and a fridge full of a new mineral water called Aqua Viva that comes in a bottle shaped like aftershave. Its slogan? THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.