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Hanging out last winter in the British Columbian ski town of Rossland, every now and again I’d notice some mud encrusted pick-up (everyone drives a pick-up in BC) with a sticker reading ‘Whitewater - the authentic powder experience’.

Which gave me problems. ‘Whitewater’ I’d always associated with rafting or kayaking; ‘powder’ was obviously skiing - so the sticker didn’t really make sense. At least not until I’d questioned Rossland mountain men Roly Worsfold and Andy Talbot.

"Ah, yes, Whitewater - it’s a ski resort - has some of the best powder in BC," was the unanimous response from both. After having heard that, I didn’t bother to ask about the origins of the name but simply arranged to pay a visit there as soon as possible - because any mountain that can boast some of the best powder in BC is effectively boasting some of the best powder in the world.

A couple of days later, with the requisite three fellow travellers to fill the car and reduce fuel costs (you can’t spend the winter skiing if you fritter away such necessities as fuel, even in low-cost Canada), we rolled into Whitewater on a gloriously sunny morning, the pure white of the snow-plastered hills and mountains screaming out against a radiant blue sky.

Like a number of resorts in North America, Whitewater doesn’t really have an associated town - it sits alone with its one base lodge in the Selkirk Mountains about 12 miles south of the funky little town of Nelson, which anyone into the outdoors will fall in love with instantly - groovy bars and cafés, great bike and ski shops and a backdrop of forested hills rising from the shores of Kootenay Lake.

Whitewater, like Nelson, has a friendly, country feel to it. It’s skied mostly by locals as there are no real facilities to cope with hordes of visitors, and the ski lodge at the base of the lifts has possibly the finest and certainly the best-value mountain restaurant in Canada.

But the thing that strikes you most as you ascend on one of the resort’s two small chair lifts is the amount of snow there is here - the place is absolutely caked in it, even though all the locals were saying it had so far been a bad season.

There’s so much snow in fact that one of the main ski areas, Powder Keg Bowl, is off-limits until early afternoon whilst men with the perfect job (skiing and setting off explosive charges) rid the area of avalanche danger (the one drawback to Whitewater skiing - it’s not always accessible because of such risk).

When Powder Keg finally opens up there’s an instant line of skiers and boarders traversing across to the top of the bowl to get to untracked snow - all the motivation that’s required for myself and fellow useless skier Jamie to decide to test ourselves on the ‘steep and deep’ (which from here doesn’t actually look that steep - but it does look deep).

After 20 minutes of gasping, sweaty traversing we come to a halt above the middle of the bowl, where it eventually dawns upon us that we’re literally in deeper - and steeper - than we’ve ever been before. And the only way out is down.

But Whitewater snow looks so fluffy and inviting, what the hell - let’s go. Total lack of style and grace notwithstanding, we slice through deep, talcum-smooth snow with only one fall each in a descent so exciting it’s almost sexual. Not a long run (because the rapidly approaching tree line slows you down) but enough for us to realise Whitewater is clearly our spiritual home and the place where we should have been born and raised. That one descent through the untracked snow of Powder Keg was all we had time for (although we had too many to count on the pisted runs), but it was enough proof that ‘the authentic powder experience’ is no word of a lie.

Whitewater may have confusing stickers, but it sure as hell has fantastic snow.

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