BAKURIANI, Georgia — To reach this tiny skiing village, carved into the north side of the Trialeti mountain range, one must weave through a long progression of switchbacks rising more than a mile above sea level. When it is snowing — which is often — the trip from the capital city of Tbilisi can take nearly three hours.

Dodo Kumaritashvili makes the journey back and forth almost every week. Her daughter has a baby girl, and so Dodo goes to Tbilisi to help take care of her granddaughter. Upon returning home one weekend recently, Dodo entered her house and called out, “I’m home, son.” Then she began cooking.

Dodo’s son, Nodar, has been dead for four years. But she makes food for him every day, usually fruit or cake or meat but never soup, not even on the coldest days. Her son hated soup. When she finishes cooking, she brings the food into her son’s room and sits among the photographs and trophies and posters on the walls. After a few hours, she clears the food away and gives it to children who live nearby.

Nodar Kumaritashvili died at 21 in a luge crash on the eve of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. It was a tragedy that stunned the sports world — he was the first athlete to die in Olympic training or competition since 1964 — and the accident compelled organizers for this month’s Olympics in Sochi, Russia, to re-evaluate the design of their luge track. The Sochi track, which will hold its first competition on Saturday, is intentionally slower, with an unprecedented three uphill sections.