Hall, a 24-year-old chalet girl from Kingston-upon-Thames, is working in a snowy Austrian paradise, where locals claim that men now outnumber women by a ratio of about eight to one. “It’s not just that there are so many of them, but they are so fit too,” enthuses a friend who is dancing on a table amid a sea of men. “They ski hard, they get toned, then they party. It’s perfect!”

Well, perfect-ish. In St Anton, the most famous resort of the Arlberg region, it appears to be snowing men. Trouble is, not everyone is happy about it. With the surge in testosterone has come some reckless behaviour on the piste and more off it. Now the tourist office, at the behest of local businesses, has put out what amounts to an official alert: Emergency in the Arlberg — more women required.

To some extent, skiing has always been a male-dominated activity. In recent years, new and more forgiving equipment has made learning much easier, costs have fallen, and family snow holidays have boomed — but, overall, women are still under-represented. Of the 1.2m Brits who hit the slopes last winter, 43% were women, according to the Ski Club of Great Britain.

The problem in St Anton — and several resorts like it — is of a different magnitude, however. Gunnar Munthe, the 58-year-old owner of the Krazy Kangaruh, one of Europe’s wildest après-ski venues and the place Hall and her friends were dancing in, would kill for a clientele that was 43% female.

“In December through to March, it’s a catastrophe,” he said last week. “It’s about 80% guys, and it is probably the best place in the world for a single woman to find a man. But on some days, it’s more like a gay club. I love all my customers, of course, but we need more women.”

So, what’s gone wrong in St Anton? How is it that a place that 10 years ago felt like any other ski resort, has suddenly become so male-dominated?

Most say the town has fallen victim to its own success. Like Chamonix in France, Jackson Hole in the States and Alagna in Italy, St Anton has boomed on the back of the extreme- skiing revolution. Thanks both to snowboarding and the dev-elopment of fatter, powder-friendly skis, more and more people can cope with deep off-piste snow, and they are venturing into the back country in droves. St Anton’s steep shoots, dramatic cliffs and vast snowy bowls have made it a magnet for this new breed of adrenaline junkies. And — for the time being at least — they are overwhelmingly male.

Drop into the swish new Anton cafe-hotel any morning just before 9am, and you start to get a feel for what’s going on. The cafe sits only a few paces from the Galzigbahn cable car, which climbs a single steel cable to an altitude of more than 2,800 metres, before depositing its passengers near the top of one of the most spectacular ski playgrounds in the world.

It is in the Anton cafe that Graham Austick, a British- born mountain guide, gathers his clients every morning before leading the assault on the hill. His company, Piste to Powder, specialises in off-piste guiding and ski-touring adventures, and is sucking in action men in droves.

By 8.45am, the cafe is packed with about 30 men, each methodically checking though a rucksack full of equipment, as if they belonged to some sort of special-forces unit. There are just three women in the room, one of whom is serving drinks.

“If you like gadgets, this is the place to be,” smiles Austick, as the armoury of state-of-the-art ski gear glistens, bleeps and flashes around him. Everyone is showing the bloke next to them their latest toy. There are nylon shovels, carbon-fibre helmets, two-way radios, first-aid kits, rucksacks that inflate in case of avalanche and even vests with built-in body armour.

And then, just as a Swede to our right starts explaining that his avalanche probe is a metre longer than the average, an awed hush descends on the room. The cause? A German has trumped everyone by pulling out a metre-long snow saw, crafted from what looks like polished titanium.