Winter Park, previously known as Hideaway Village, is like a powder stash that Colorado locals keep for themselves. Only a couple of hours out of Denver, Winter Park is consistently voted the most popular resort in Colorado by newspaper surveys — and it doesn’t take long to find out why.

About 37 inches of snow fell in 48 hours, followed by bright sunshine for an hour and then more snow for a week. According to locals it usually snows a few inches at night and is sunny during the day. As I rode up the lift I couldn’t help getting excited as I looked at the huge forest with the runs cutting through it. The resort is spread over three mountains. The first two, Vasquez Ridge and Winter Park, are mainly intermediate and learner terrain with easy runs that have a few tasty black spots here and there. The last one, “no pain without Mary Jane” Mountain is where the hard-core locals frequent. It has mainly black runs, steep groomed and bump runs, wicked trees and a few chutes. As we approached the summit of Winter Park mountain my guide, Wendy, told me of the resort’s vital statistics. It has a total vertical drop of 3060 feet with 122 trails over 2571 acres and is serviced by 20 lifts. It equals the capacity of Vail, also in Colorado, but with only a quarter of the customers and none of the queues. The breakdown of terrain stands at 10 per cent beginner, about 25 per cent intermediate, 12 per cent advanced and just over 50 per cent expert. The majority of the expert terrain is on their recently opened area Vasquez Cirque, which boasts a warning sign: “Extreme Backcountry Adventurers Only”. I couldn’t wait to check it out but we had to go down the Outhouse run first to get there.

Whilst clipping into my bindings at the top of the run Wendy asked about my abilities. I told her I was advanced which was hardly justified since I was on borrowed equipment and hadn’t boarded for a year. I paid for my arrogance on our warm-up run which was down 1000 vertical feet of mansize moguls. Wendy danced down the run and waited for me at the bottom. “Welcome to Mary Jane.” she said when I finally arrived. Unfortunately her warm words did little to console or soothe my hammered body. Had I arrived at this mountain 70 years ago, I may well have had my hammered body soothed. The original Mary Jane ran a brothel on the mountain catering for the railway workers on the main west to east line. The railway company was so grateful for Mary Jane’s services they gave her the mountain, hence the mountain’s name. Fortunately the warm hospitality in Winter Park lives on, albeit without Mary Jane herself. Riding the big bump runs on Mary Jane was a lot of fun. But what turned me on was the powder between the trees. It was irresistible.

Winter Park has managed to create a unique fun park in the Stone Glade woods by clearing the small trees and making jump platforms out of the dead wood. These are deadly jumps that require total control and accuracy. Typical of Winter Park’s management, who try to accommodate everyone and everything, these jump platforms are also home to native squirrels. They even provide warm, sheltered picnic tables with pleasant views for lunch. In addition to the lift passes being the cheapest in Colorado there are loads of deals and freebies throughout the season. Learners get 60 per cent off the regular ticket price and can use all the lifts they need. Throughout January lessons for learners are free. The Disabled Centre at Winter Park is the biggest of its kind in the world and they can teach anybody with any disability to ski or snowboard. Children too are well catered for: kids aged from three months to nine-years-old are pampered whether they’re learning to ski, board or just colouring-in.

With so many trails and slopes to explore you could ski for weeks without feeling limited. If you fancy an alternative to skiing for a day there are all the usual choices: snow mobiles, dog sledding, tyre tubing (great fun during a night out) and the more unusual snow mountain biking. Most visitors ski their heart out all day then apres-ski till they drop at night. In this department Winter Park has more than a healthy choice of bars to choose from and a free bus running the mile distance between the town and the bevy of bars around the resort.

After indulging for nearly a week during which time I had more powder skiing than I ever dreamed of I was dangerously close to questioning my existence, “why do I work in a city, in a country where they ski on plastic and they think powder is for washing?” The answer — so I can go to places like Winter Park.