“BOY, it’s great to be back in my favourite skiing area, bar nowhere!” says Nick Parks. Coming from one of the most distinguished British mountain guides in the Alps, this is tribute, indeed, to Sainte-Foy-Tarentaise.

On a steely-cold January morning, Parks and I ride the trio of chairlifts from the base station to the heights of Col de l’Aiguille. Minutes later we have left the pistes and are the only skiers in a vast snowy bowl with stupendous views to the glistening crags of 3,800m (12,467ft) Mont Pourri and the sculpted blue ice of Glacier du Geay. It has not snowed for more than a week, but still we trace fresh tracks through virgin powder all the way down to the frozen stream on the Monal valley floor.

“One dump in Val d’Isère or Les Arcs, and within hours you are struggling to find the untracked stuff that we all love. So you see why I make a beeline for Sainte-Foy whenever I have a day off,” my guide says. He is not the only one. Last season I kept hearing instructors and other habitués of the Tarentaise mega-resorts mentioning, sotto voce, a mysterious hidden jewel with fabulous snow and deserted slopes almost on their doorstep.

So why don’t more skiers choose Sainte-Foy? Because we are invited to swallow the bigger-is-better folly that reigns in the region. Val and Tignes make up the huge Espace Killy; La Plagne, Les Arcs and numerous outlying villages are all part of Paradiski. Little Sainte-Foy, on the other hand, is alone and unlinked, with too little accommodation for most tour operators even to bother offering it. So few people have heard of it.

“I usually suggest to my most discerning clients that we ski a day in Sainte-Foy,” says the ski coach Colin Tanner, of the Val d’Isère-based Development Centre.

“So where is it, exactly?” I had to ask, dimly recalling a village on the road from Bourg-St-Maurice towards Val d’Isère and Tignes. From here, Sainte-Foy ski station is 4km (2½ miles) off to the left, up a steep mountain road. It consists of a scattering of farm buildings, chalets and apartments, plus a few restaurants and ski hire shops huddling among the forests. There are three chairlifts and 25km of prepared piste. But such numbers give few clues to the scope of the skiing.

To start with, the top lift serves superb off-piste routes such as the Le Monal and Foglietta, for which you need a mountain guide. However, there are many other easier, unpisted “itineraires” accessible without a guide. It is hard to think of anywhere better suited to off-piste rookies who want to take their first step out of the comfort zone.

Intermediate skiers find empty black and red runs that are different from the factory skiing of Espace Killy or Paradiski. I felt a sense of really being in mountain wilds rather than a processed resort, as I skied from the Col de l’Aiguille down the swooping, north-west-facing slopes to the base. The vertical drop is more than 1,000m, which is respectable even by Big Val’s standards.

There is a nursery slope served by a “magic carpet” lift at the station base. A fourth chairlift, serving newly graded blue runs from the resort’s highest points, is due to open next season.

Catherine Wolseley, from Carlisle, who owns an apartment in Sainte-Foy, tells me: “My three children all learnt to ski here. It is the ideal family resort, because all the runs funnel down to a single spot. Kids can’t get lost, so you don’t need to watch them all the time.”

Strong intermediate skiers and snowboarders not motivated to stray off-piste are the only people who would probably find the slopes of Sainte-Foy limiting. On the other hand, some of the most extensive linked ski areas in the Alps are near by. Les Arcs (via the outpost village of Villaroger) is ten minutes by road. Val d’Isère, Tignes and La Rosière, which links with La Thuile in Italy, are not much farther.

To take advantage of all this, one small chalet operator, Snowology, offers a handy “ski safari”, driving guests somewhere different every day if they wish. However, Mike Jubb, who runs the programme, says: “This is what our guests expect to do, but they frequently change their minds once they discover the slopes here, and never set ski outside Sainte-Foy.”

Party animals are the other species who should look elsewhere. The bubbly, smoky evening scene in the Hotel Le Monal bar is as exciting as the nightlife gets.

So come for the mountains and snow instead. Sainte-Foy is a minnow among mega- resorts, but I am with Nick Parks: deserted slopes high in the majesty of the Tarentaise valley are as good as skiing in the Alps gets.

NEED TO KNOW

Martin Symington travelled with Momentum Ski (020-7371 9111,
www.momentumski.com). A week’s B&B at Hotel Le Monal in Sainte-Foy is from £629pp, including Gatwick-Chambéry flights and car hire,
based on two sharing. Mountain Tracks off-piste “clinics” (020-8877 5773, www.mountaintracks.co.uk). Development Centre tuition (00 33 6 15 55 31 56, www.tdcski.com). Snowology ski safaris (00 33 6 78 22 32 74, www.snowology.com).

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... AND HERE'S THE PICK IN THE US

With hindsight, perhaps Donovan’s Mellow Yellow wafting from the trail-side Ice Bar was a clue. The mountain guide Mark Solari’s finale for me was to tackle Banana Funnel, an almost vertical couloir bending down from a ridge just beneath the 3,650m (12,000ft) summit of Mount Crested Butte.

This is the sort of terrain that has given the far-flung Colorado town and its adjacent ski area cult status with American ski bums who like their slopes steep and powder deep. A butte (pronounced “beaut”’) is a mountain standing in isolation, and this one is topped with a peak. It hides away in a valley, five hours by road from Denver and a world away from the glitz of Aspen or Vail.

Instead, Crested Butte is a cute wild west town with a Main Street of wooden-fronted houses painted sunset red and banana yellow. For saloon-bar vibes, sassy waitresses, cold beer and barbecue nights, stay at a downtown guesthouse. For king-sized beds and outdoor hot tubs, there are luxury condos and the Crested Butte Lodge, three miles away at the purpose-built base of the ski area.

The 11 chairlifts and couple of T-bars give access to numerous un-pisted trails through rocky canyons and gullies of deep powder snow with names such as Sock-It-To-Me Ridge and Spellbound Glades. Happily there are “chicken runs” — easier through much of the “extreme terrain”. The ski area also has a good range of groomed trails that are almost empty most of the time. The freshly tracked runs of fine-ridged corduroy first thing in the morning were fabulous.

Crystal Ski (0870 4020291, www.crystalholidays.co.uk) offers seven nights’ room only at The Grand Lodge hotel in Crested Butte from £609pp, including direct flights from Gatwick to Denver on Thomsonfly. Information: 001 888 463 6714, www.crestedbutteresort.com.

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