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Flying into Heathrow through the weak and watery sunshine of a February morning, it took some time to realise that I’d lost my mind. Well, not so much lost it as left it behind in the rolling mountains and forested slopes of British Columbia.

The views slipping past the window of the train from Heathrow into London just didn’t register, for in my thoughts I was still carving through several feet of featherlight powder snow, the scent of cedars wafting across peppermint-fresh alpine air and the sun glistening on a trillion snow flakes scattered across mountains that appeared to stretch all the way to the Arctic Circle. Winter and mountains are neither the season nor the landscape normally associated with paradise, but I’d definitely found it, and my mind was reluctant to let it go. Once again back in London in body only…

Yet tell any European skier or boarder that you’ve just been enjoying the slopes of British Columbia and chances are they won’t even have heard of the places from which I’d just returned - they’ll almost certainly assume you’re talking about Whistler. And it would be tempting to say leave them in ignorance, for if you head east from Vancouver and into BC’s ‘interior’ you’ll find snow conditions that most skiers can only dream about, and the kind of skiing and boarding secret that everyone wants first of all to discover, and then to keep to themselves.

I was half of a winter sports ‘odd couple’ - a skier (myself) and a snowboarder (Stuart), usually protagonists on the slopes rather than travelling companions, who had set aside our imagined differences for a winter road trip par excellence. A couple of months earlier I’d never even heard of the most of the mountain ranges we would be visiting, let alone the five resorts on our itinerary. Now I was about to discover that at each and every one we could hop straight onto the lifts and, a few minutes later, straight off into perfect powder - metre upon metre of it. Powder snow is as normal to a British Columbian skier as is sun to a Bedouin, since between November and late April the temperature in the mountains rarely, if ever, gets above freezing. At the same time it never gets much below minus 15 C, and as the sun often shines too it makes for some of the finest skiing and boarding conditions in the world.

Driving to the resorts is almost as much fun as skiing in them. Despite getting a speeding ticket within 15 minutes of heading out of Vancouver, a hire car really was the best way to reach our first stop, Sun Peaks in Central BC. Only four hours from Vancouver, the road to Sun Peaks passes through scenery that the directors of car ads and James Bond films would die for. Travelling on Highway 5 over the Coquihalla Pass is an inspiring experience - snow plastered mountains had us itching to get onto the slopes, signs warning of avalanche danger make you feel like an intrepid traveller, and the mysterious animal tracks through the roadside snowfields and up into the forest - well, deer, hare, fox or wolf - who knows?

Rolling into our hotel just as the purple glow of sunset faded behind the mountains we quickly unpacked and went for a pre-dinner stroll around this new purpose-built resort. Dry snow creaked under our boots, a light snowfall began and all was well with the skiing world as far as I was concerned.

And things just got better the next day. Sun Peaks lived up to its name - it was sunny and there were plenty of peaks - and we received VIP treatment with a tour of the mountain from Canada’s 1968 Olympic gold medallist Nancy Greene. This particular VIP treatment is available to anyone, as Nancy takes visitors around the slopes on a free guided tour every day. So it was that whilst trailing in the wake of a woman almost twice our age and easily twice as fast we were able to discover hidden glades, untracked powder and the best restaurant on the mountain.

After two days of skiing and boarding in conditions that positively encouraged us to push ourselves to new limits it was difficult to tear ourselves away to our next destination - a situation that was to become all too familiar over the next 10 days or so. Four hours down the road from Sun Peaks our hire car ground ever upwards through night-black forests towards flickering lights high above, the Propellerheads’ version of the James Bond theme boomed out of the stereo, and it would have been only a minor surprise to have been greeted on arrival with the words “Velcome to my home, gentlemen” by a Dr. Evil lookalike.

Instead we drove into a small town with a single main street where, despite the snow, a couple of horses hitched outside the saloon would not have been out of place. When an obnoxious youth was vigorously ejected from the swing doors of the saloon to sprawl in the snow, the scene was complete - the Dodge City of skiing.

This was, in fact, Silver Star in the Okanagan Mountains, and waking the next morning to another sun bedazzled day this former gold mining town, a ski resort for the past 40 years, put on a new and very alluring face. From the main street you can take an easy run down Vance Creek, then make your way over to the more challenging pistes of Puttnam Creek, and if you like tree skiing this is the place for you.

The majority of the runs have been cut through pine forests, and on the higher slopes you’ll discover a phenomenon that occurs at many of BC’s ski resorts - snow ghosts. These are trees that are plastered with layer upon layer of snow so that they resemble a Christmas cake decoration. With around eight metres of snow falling at most resorts every winter the lower levels of the trees are usually buried so that only the upper branches stand proud, and it’s remarkable that they can survive months on end in this icy straightjacket. It’s also worth noting that although it seems like a quick tap with your ski pole would have the snow ghosts dumping their burden on anyone skiing behind you, the snow is actually set like cement on the branches - so trying to dislodge it whilst travelling at speed is not the wisest of manoeuvres, as I found out more than once.

At one point whilst drifting around aimlessly on the slopes of Puttnam Creek I was seriously concerned about having become lost. Skiing alone down what appeared to be groomed slopes I didn’t see anyone for several minutes, which several seasons in the Alps has taught me could only be because I’d strayed way off piste. Concerned that I may end up becoming a human snow ghost it was a relief to round a corner and find a ski lift quietly chugging away in an open glade - sure enough, I had been on a groomed run, it’s just that in BC you can easily find solitude in the mountains without actually going anywhere near the ‘real’ great outdoors.

Silver Star begged us to stay, but Big White beckoned just as temptingly, so in the spirit of discovery we said a sad farewell to good ol’ Silver Star and drove with aching legs and soaring spirits towards the Southern Monashees and BC’s second-biggest ski resort. The wide open upper slopes at Big White give fantastic views out across an untouched mountain wilderness - it’s difficult to imagine that overcrowding could ever be a problem here - and for any skier of ‘average’ ability the runs here really encourage you to push yourself, as does the snow.

I found it hard to believe that this cool talcum powder dry precipitation couldn’t appeal to anyone who has ever used skis or board but apparently a good number of locals were not interested in it - with a gap of around six days since the area had received a fresh dusting it didn’t meet their stringent requirements. Oh, well, all the more of it for me and Stuart to enjoy. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I carried on skiing until well after dark on one of Big White’s two floodlit runs.

Our next stop was, for the first time, a disappointment - for about five minutes. Driving into the main car park at Red Mountain we could see little of the slopes as the mountains of the Kootenay Range were shrouded in cloud, and it had to be said the Base Lodge had rather more about it of Scotland circa 1976 than Canada 2000. But appearances can be, and were, deceptive. Only the most soul-less individual could fail to appreciate the homely atmosphere in the lodge, and ‘Red’s’ proud history was displayed along the walls - the resort’s satellite town of Rossland has provided more Canadian ski team members than any other town in the country.

Once we got on the mountain we could see why. Red Mountain and its bigger, gnarlier brother Granite Mountain are where you come to prove yourself. It doesn’t matter what your level of ability, there will be a run here that will pummel you into submission, because it’s steep, deep and bumpy pretty much everywhere you look - only a limited number of runs are groomed. Red is not a forgiving place but it rewards you well for accepting the challenges on offer - double black diamond runs such as Short Squaw may have had me shaking in my ski boots, but in return the easier lower slopes gave me the rare chance to ski through deep powder in some semblance of control. I could even forgive the damned snowboarder (Stuart) in front of me for carving up a swirling white cloud of snow for me to negotiate as we descended the mountain - it kind of made things seem a little more extreme and thus massaged my ego just that bit more.

Red - or rather Rossland - continued to surprise us after we’d finished on the mountain. Another one street town with a distinctly western feel to its architecture, it also has some of the coolest restaurants and sports shops in the western hemisphere. I consider that any shop named ‘The Sacred Ride’ is worthy of a dollar or two of my money, and now I have the baseball cap to prove it.

From Red Mountain we were heading back upmarket with our final stop at Fernie, which sits in the shadow of the inspiring peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Fernie has been a ‘cult’ North American resort for years on account of it’s - and I hate this phrase - ‘champagne’ powder - but it IS appropriate here. Last year the amount of skiable terrain was doubled, so it was inevitable that we would get lost. Trailing around the mountain’s five huge bowls (Siberia, Timber, Currie, Lizard and Cedar) it was like being a fat boy in a sweet shop - spoilt for choice it was almost impossible to decide what to tuck into.

And you might know it, on the very last morning of our stay in BC we discovered possibly the best run of the trip. It was perhaps just that everything came right at the right time - we were both relaxed and confident with our technique, there had been a fresh fall of powder overnight, the sun was breaking through so that the Rockies began to appear in all their magnificence, and as we set off on our last run we heard the mournful blast of a freight locomotive’s whistle, as, way below in the valley, it rolled on east for Calgary. A goodbye cry from the Rocky Mountains.

Snow cascading behind us, freeze dried air awakening all our senses, we swept across open bowls, through the cedars, and down, down, down to reality - reality being the fact that it will all be there next year and I’ll be going back for more.

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