TRAVEL / SKI SPECIAL: Bypassing the last resort: Tired of sharing the same slushy slopes with tribes of Club 18-30 skiers? Our guide will help you choose when and where to go to find classier descents at the lowest prices

FRIENDS extol the heavenly virtues of resort X. 'Never had a better holiday in my life,' they say. But when you get there, the lift queues are around the block and the snow is pathetically thin on the ground.

Nobody can guarantee a perfect week of thigh-deep powder and scorching sunshine. But careful planning, looking harder at the calendar than at the brochure blandishments, is an excellent hedge. When you go is at least as important as where.

A holiday in the winter sun is an entirely different thing from a ski vacation, where quantity of snow and variety of pistes count foremost. Don't go to the Alps at Christmas looking for a suntan. And why pay high-season prices if spartan skiing will suffice? St Moritz and Cortina are low-status at the 'wrong' time of year. The skiing may be better, and less crowded, in March. By then the beau monde has long departed.

Skiers seeking solitary tracks down the fabled off-piste resorts of Val d'Isere, Verbier and Chamonix will not appreciate the M25 congestion levels endemic over Christmas and throughout February. Holidaymakers given to Gemutlichkeit, or laid-back cosiness, will be appalled by the noisy scenes exhibited in normally staid Austrian resorts like Lech and St Anton during the German carnival, Fasching, in mid February.

Consideration as to when a skiing holiday is booked can save 50 per cent or more. The savings in grief are even more considerable. The Skier's Calendar breaks down into five holiday periods, each with its own snowfall, sunshine and social characteristics.

PRE-SEASON SKIING

NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER

The best skiing is the earliest skiing. Last winter early snowstorms brought rave powder snow to Val d'Isere, Chamonix and Verbier in mid October. This year, the Alps got their first metre of snow in the final week of September. Imagine, almost two months of skiing pistes full of snow and empty of crowds. It would never occur to most people to book a ski holiday earlier than Christmas.

Austria leads Europe in early skiing: eight glaciers open the season in October. The World Cup ski racing season kicks off in Solden on October 29 with Roncalli's Big Top circus for off-piste entertainment, and guaranteed skiing on the nearby glacier for both racers and piste skiers.

The ski lifts at Zermatt are open 365 days a year, though glacier runs there are less than exciting. Pre-Christmas get-fit weeks, for more serious skiers, are a tradition in Saas Fee, Val d'Isere, St Anton and Verbier. In Verbier these 'evasion weeks' are loyally subscribed by skiers keen to rip around secret powder stashes revealed by the Swiss ski school's best guides, themselves eager to get their ski legs for the new season.

In the weeks before Christmas, prices all over the Alps are reduced in 'white week' specials. British tour operators start paying rent on their chalets from 1 December, and some advertise flight, bed and breakfast packages at prices below pounds 200. For the latest in ultra-early offers, it's best to phone tour operators direct.

One offer which cannot be refused is Crested Butte, Colorado's no-strings-attached absolutely free month of skiing. For the thirdyear running, Crested Butte will issue free lift tickets to all comers from 19 November to 18 December. Free ski lessons for first-time skiers are an additional incentive to jump-start the season there.

THE HOLIDAYS

CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR

There is no resort in the world which is not packed out over Christmas. A cosy Austrian village like Ischgl is cheery and vibrant. Zermatt has a classic allure: the best mountain restaurants, the Matterhorn and the bronze marmots. Verbier's fireworks and bottle- smashing brawl on New Year's Eve is a must for the nouveau riche from all over Europe.

But if you actually want to ski, and Oxford Street crowds do nothing for you, helicopter skiing in British Columbia is a serious alternative. Word is that Canadian heliskiing is only for experts and is outrageously expensive. Wrong, say the market leaders CMH, who have calculated that a week heliskiing over Christmas is actually cheaper than a week in a good hotel in Aspen or Zermatt.

With the new wide-body powder skis, any intermediate can become an expert in deep snow. And Christmas is low season for heliskiers. No matter how crowded the pistes in Vail or Val d'Isere, there are never more than 44 skiers in a CMH wilderness lodge. CMH skiing terrain measures an area equivalent to the size of Switzerland.

Not ever ybody wants to get away. For the widest range of skiing, a fairly good guarantee of snow and the least horrific lift queues, the Trois Vallees in France are a sensible choice. The sprawl of lifts emanating from Meribel and Courchevel disperses skiers so that while you may not be able to get to where you want to go, you are sure to be skiing rather than standing in a lift queue.

Both resorts are fashionable with the French, to say the least. The atmosphere over the holidays is infectious and convivial. But no French resort comes close to conveying the old-fashioned feel of a traditional Christmas. For fir trees laden with snow, horse-drawn sleighs jingling with bells and curls of smoke wending up from wooden chalets, Austria and Switzerland harbour hundreds of hamlets. The catch is that none of these charming villages can compare with the efficiency and variety of skiing in the big French resorts.

What the Swiss and Austrians do to resolve this dilemma is to forget about downhill skiing over Christmas and break out the cross-country skis. The Bernese Oberland in Switzerland, for example, is a region of immense charm and stunning scenery. Cross-country trails do not require such deep snow. Walking on cross- country skis requires little expertise, assuming one is not going in for marathon races like the one in St Moritz which draws over 10,000 participants each spring. Kandersteg in the Bernese Oberland is a renowned cross-country centre with the added virtue of ample piste skiing up to the intermediate level.

THE HOLE

JANUARY

This is the month real skiers come out to play. Minimum sunshine, the shortest days . . . the lightest powder snow and low, low prices. Hotels and tour operators suffer booking shortages after the holiday peaks of Christmas and New Year. Prices drop to reflect the reality. And lift queues wither.

First-time visitors to America will discover what boot warmers and neoprene face masks are. The Rockies are younger and colder than the Alps. The east coast of the USA is trying to live down its reputation for boiler plate ice pistes, now that grooming machines to crush the ice and spread it around like 'powder' have been invented and snowmaking has been installed on almost all mountains. But Killington and Stowe in Vermont, though appreciably cheaper than Colorado resorts, cannot begin to compare with the Rockies. Fair-weather skiers should indeed hold off another month or two. But for the best chance of chest-high, feather-light powder snow, January is the time to go and Utah is the place. Snowbird, Park City and the cult resort of Alta make snow depths in the Alps look pathetic. Snowfall levels exceeding 500 inches are the attraction. But cold temperatures in Colorado and Wyoming are commensurate.

In California, the sun is usually shining, even in January. Squaw Valley, where you get your money back if lift queues are longer than 10 minutes, has desert-dry air and hot winter sunshine, as do the dozen other resorts along the shores of Lake Tahoe. Mammoth Mountain typifies the California phenomenon of massive snowstorms two or three times a year, with sunny periods in between.

Back in Europe, the 'hole' makes skiing legends like St Anton affordable. The big 'ski circus' networks usually have enough snow by January so that all the essential liaison lifts are open. For intermediates, these networks are adventure playgrounds. The skiing on groomed and marked pistes is so extensive that even beginners can thrill to ski itineraries, travelling from one village to another.

Portes du Soleil stretches across the French and Swiss border. Les Arcs is three interlinked resorts at different altitudes. The Superski Dolomiti Skipass region in northern Italy is so vast, encompassing resorts from Bolzano to Cortina, that it takes weeks to circumnavigate with a car.

In seasons when snowfalls have been less than generous, January is a good bet. If it's going to snow at all, it's going to snow in January. And if it's going to snow anywhere, it's going to snow in Andermatt - which is famous as a 'snowhole'. Three different valleys channel snowstorms into Andermatt, where the Swiss army holds winter manoeuvres. Perched above the St Gotthard tunnel, Andermatt has been bypassed by traffic and tourists in the recent past. But it boasts some of the best and most varied off-piste skiing in the Alps.

HIGH SEASON

FEBRUARY AND EARLY MARCH

The peak of the ski season, the confluence of those who want to ski in early spring sunshine and those who are forced on holiday by school schedules. It can't be denied that the strengthening winter sun and the swish of skis on still crispy snow is a heady mix.

This is the time for flaunting fur coats. Social climbers and bemusedspectators alike should look in on St Moritz, Cortina d'Ampezzo and Lech. Forget Gstaad. Roger Moore is the only person who still skis there. In St Moritz, skiing is only one of the diversions. Polo on ice, golf tournaments on the frozen lake, a number of horse-racing fixtures on snow and the feared and famous Cresta Run are all laid on in February.

In North America, this is the best timeto try Whistler. Blackcomb and Whistler, two competing operations, are respectively number one and number two in amount of vertical skiing available on the American continent. Whistler's proximity to the Pacific results in outrageous dumps of snow. But the maritime climate can also bring extreme degrees of cold in December, and rain in March.

French school holidays extend through the first week of March. Most French resorts and their Swiss cousins, like Crans Montana and Verbier, exhibit serious piste pollution for the duration. An Austrian retreat like Obergurgl beckons the British. It has an enviable snow record, has no through traffic and is both cosy and convenient for learners.

Lech merits consideration too. It is the only ski resort in the Alps to say enough is enough. After 14,000 skipasses, including season passes, have been sold, the doors are closed. Skier density on-piste is an obvious accelerant of accidents. Lech is the only resort to put skier safety, and quality of the ski experience, ahead of cash sales.

February is much less crowded in America. There is no such thing as half-term there. The only major holiday is a four-day weekend, called Presidents' Day, which this year is February 19-21. To pull in the punters in bulk, the Americans sponsor special skier weeks: 'Physically Challenged Ski Week', 'Gay Skier Week', 'Fireman's Week'. Be especially careful of 'Liability Lawyer's Week'.

Now that off-piste skiing has devolved to the masses, formerly 'hidden' runs fairly close to the lifts have become highways. There are several ways to escape.

In Switzerland, helicopters hired through local ski schools deposit off-piste skiers, accompanied by a mountain guide, on selected peaks outside resort boundaries.

From Zermatt, Verbier, Saas Fee or Grindelwald some long and untracked itineraries are accessible by helicopter. For just over pounds 100 per person, a day of ski sauvage can be an inviting respite from a week cooped up in a chalet in a resort.

When resort pistes are pullulating, the backcountry is often empty. Mountain guides like John Hogg, of Andermatt, and Ueli Frei, of Grindelwald, ferry interested skiers right across the Alps in week-long ski safaris that can be geared from intermediate to expert level. This is not ski touring.

The idea is to ride up on ski lifts, ski down routes known only to the guides and sleep each night in a good hotel. Skiers who've been on safari seldom return to the piste, in any resort.

LATE SEASON

MID MARCH AND APRIL

Easter is the traditional finale of the ski season. And this yearEaster is fairly early, 4 April. But good skiing, sometimes the best of the season, can continue into May.

High altitude resorts (Chamonix, Val d'Isere, Tignes, Saas Fee and Zermatt) can surprise skiers with deep powder snow late in April. Spring snow, a transformation of the snowpack into an easy skiing, sensuous surface, turns south-facing slopes into playgrounds for skiers of all abilities.

Theonly drawback to late season skiing is that the snow can become wet and slushy in the afternoons. Trails down to lower altitude resorts might lack snow, necessitating riding lifts down at the day's end.

But, just as during the first weeks of winter, this is the time to look for massive discounts. Ski shops sell off leftover stock and package tour operators make desperate offers to woo us out on to the slopes for what is for them the dregs of the season.

American resorts close sometimes as early as the beginning of April, not because there's no snow on the mountains but because of the US forest service regulations.

However, Jackson Hole in Wyoming is renowned for its late-season spring snow and its vertical minefields of 'slush bumps'. Killington in Vermont makes a point of skiing as late as June. Helicopter skiing in British Columbia entices waves of snowboarders and die-hard powder fanatics right through April.

One of skiing's most deeply satisfying adventures, accessible to any strong beginner accompanied by a mountain guide, is the Vallee Blanche in Chamonix.

This is the longest, most scenic ski run in the Alps. No walking uphill is required. From the cable caron the Aiguille du Midi at 3,800m to the floor of Chamonix valley, this is 22km of crevasses and needle spires of rock dropping down 2,770 metres.

The Vallee Blanche is a fitting end to anybody's ski season. Skierslucky enough to be in Chamonix at the time of a full moon might try the Vallee Blanche by moonlight. The proper confluence of conditions is a rare event.

Mild weather, cloudless skies and low avalanche hazard are required. Let's not forget you need all these on the night of a full moon, too. Last year it did happen, on 7 March.

Skittering across the black yawn of a crevasse, stopping to look back at intense beams of white light emanating like flashes of underground lightning from the jagged depths of a hanging wall of softly glowing ice . . . the Vallee Blanche at midnight deserves a little note of its own in the skiing calendar.

(Photograph omitted)