Ski Kirkwood by Arnie Wilson

Big cobalt sky. Jagged granite peaks thrown up by ancient volcanic eruptions, piled high with snow. It just needs a Jimmy Stewart or a Charlton Heston on horseback plodding through the deep snow to make it a Hollywood set piece. Nothing has really changed here since the West was won.

Kirkwood sits high in a natural, steep-sided amphitheatre with jagged peaks overlooking extensive bowl-skiing. If you turn your back on the burgeoning but still small ski village of Kirkwood, ignore the low decibel level of whirring ski lifts and minor human activity, and look up into the mountains and the steep snowbowls beneath them, you are looking at a pristine and breathtaking slice of the old west as it was in the days of Kit Carson and other frontiersmen. Why, the mountain pass you had to travel to get here is named after the trapper, hunter and guide who took part in the conquest of California, and as a brigadier general of volunteers, fought native American tribes that had sided with the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Even the Nevada state capital, Carson City – another world - lies just across the High Sierras. To be able to ski these stunning mountains is a privilege. Just being able to look at them is sufficient reason to be here.

Kirkwood is the big Tahoe resort with the relatively small following. The cognoscenti come here, happy that most ski tourists who arrive in Reno or San Francisco head straight for the fleshpots of Heavenly and the bragging rights of Squaw Valley. Kirkwood is only 35 minutes away from the Las Vegas-style gambling joints of Stateline, Nevada, just across the Californian border with South Lake Tahoe. The management, however, hope that skiers and snowboarders might get wind of this gorgeous little spot in the more remote hinterland of Lake Tahoe . The “best kept secretâ€