American beauty

The US and Canada have the white stuff in abundance, but British skiers need to choose between the untamed east or the less-than-wild west coasts, says Stephen Wood

To suggest that one of the big attractions of the US is the breadth of choice it offers might seem merely a statement of the obvious. On the other hand, those with a sophisticated view of "breadth of choice" would find the notion utterly absurd. Drive along a characteristic US shopping strip in search of nourishment, for example, and all you will find are many varieties of the same, processed fodder. But it is the range of styles of skiing in the US - and Canada - which draws Britons across the Atlantic instead of taking the easier, cheaper and more obvious option of skiing in the Alps. North America may not take a huge share of the market (5.8 per cent), but more British skiers are reckoned to go there than to Switzerland (5.4 per cent).

Ask the managing director of North America specialists Ski Safari, Richard Rice, about the appeal of the US and Canada, and he'll respond: "To whom?" For families, he says, "It's the small resorts, where there seems to be so much more time and space than in the Alps: everyone is so friendly, and the pace is never hectic." For good skiers it's the snow, "particularly the powder out in the west". Those who put a premium on accommodation are very unlikely to be dissatisfied, Rice reckons, wherever they go in North America: "Anyone who books into a nice, spacious condo is going to enjoy it, no question. And then there's the service..."

Since North American resorts differ so widely, Rice says, the choice of the ideal destination "depends on the factors that the client regards as most important. But when you add together the key common elements of snow, space on the slopes, generous accommodation of high quality and good service, the result is a satisfying holiday." And in the US this season, a better-value holiday too, thanks to the favourable exchange rate.

That there are so many styles of skiing has more to do with North America's topography and climate, history and communications than its attachment to free-market capitalism. The former mining town of Telluride in Colorado - a beautiful piece of late-19th-century archaeology with an en suite ski area of steep glades and smooth rides - has remained small and perfectly formed, initially because of its isolation, more recently because its inhabitants wanted to keep it that way.

Set above a New Mexican mesa slashed by the Rio Grande, gnarly Taos Ski Valley is blessed with plentiful snow and continuing ownership by a single family; and despite modern conveniences such as a road up to the slopes - something that the resort lacked for the first 16 years of its existence - it is hard to imagine the bizarre Native-American/Spanish-Colonial/hippy ambience of Taos being eroded.

Telluride and Taos have in common character and inconvenience, both lying stranded between the international airports of Denver and Alberquerque. Consider another pairing, also in the US: Mad River Glen and Vail. The former is near liberal Vermont's biggest city Burlington; owned and run by a co-op, it claims not to groom its 45 pistes, offers no accommodation at its base and sells itself under the off-putting slogan "Ski it if you can". The latter is a couple of hours from Denver in right-wing Colorado; it is owned by shareholders in Wall-Street-quoted Vail Resorts, manicures the majority of its 193 pistes, and has four five-star hotels. Two of those hotels are owned by Vail Resorts, whose list of almost 50 trademarks includes "New Technology Center" (no, I have no idea) and "There's no comparison".

Both Mad River Glen and Vail have great skiing, but their terrain is completely different. The 115 skiable acres at Mad River Glen (highest point: 3,637ft) are packed with narrow, winding pistes and very tricky descents through the trees. Although it's great fun - the atmosphere on the slopes is extraordinarily friendly - it's also very limited: for UK visitors, it only makes sense to ski Mad River Glen along with other nearby resorts, including Sugarbush, Stowe, and Smugglers Notch. In contrast Vail (highest point: 11,570ft) is almost unlimited, its 5,289 skiable acres providing slopes for all kinds of skier, from blue runs on the front face to snow-bowls beyond.

Making a choice from such varied destinations is difficult. But first, every UK skier heading across the Atlantic has to decide between east and west. The comparison between Mad River Glen and Vail is extreme; but it generally holds true that as you go west the mountains get taller, the snowfall heavier, the prices higher (certainly for packages from the UK), the valet services more numerous, the climate more forgiving. You pay your money: for example £355 in Stowe or £525 in Breckenridge for the same January week, room only, with Inghams. And you make your choice: Rice reckons only about 10 per cent of his customers go to east-coast resorts.

Judged on Rice's four elements of a satisfying holiday (snow, space, accommodation, service), the case for the west is a strong one: it's no surprise that the most popular North American resort among British skiers should be Whistler Blackcomb, north of Vancouver. Other factors make the west's case even stronger. Compared with those in the Alps, US and Canadian ski areas are small, Vail's being less than one-sixth of the size of the new Paradiski in France; but all the big North American areas are out west. The mountain scenery is bigger and better there than in the east, too. And the food - surprisingly good in North American resorts - always seems (at least to me) to improve as one heads across from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

So why, having previously followed the crowd to Denver, Salt Lake City, Calgary and beyond, do I now feel a growing fondness for east-coast skiing? Not because of the capricious and often viciously cold weather (nor the driving from town to ski-hill) but because the major western resorts are becoming just a little too popular, too big, too corporate. East-coast skiing is more old-fashioned, slacker and grungier; the resorts are smaller, and have far more character. The taste for Fernie, Steamboat and Sun Valley will not go away; but I've already been there. Which is another reason why Bromley in Vermont and Le Massif in Quebec now seem more interesting.

Ski Safari: 01273 223680; www.skisafari.com. Inghams: 020-8780 4433; www.inghams.co.uk