There’s a common misconception – held by skiers, mostly – that snowboarders are happiest when larking about in the terrain park, launching themselves off huge snow ramps and skidding along hard-edged metal railings. Well, that may be true of snowboarders under the age of 20, but it certainly isn’t true of me – and of many like me. For us, “freestyle” snowboarding, as it’s known, is rather like a chilli-eating contest: it may be fun at the start, but we don’t care much for the consequences. We’ve got jobs to go to. We can’t waste a couple of weeks sitting around in hospital once the holiday’s over, waiting for broken bones to heal.

Besides, we have our own snowboarding obsession to drive us to the mountains each winter: powder. Powder is the pillowy, pneumatic coating of deep virgin snow that coats a mountain after a blizzard, and riding it is, in my book, the finest winter activity known to man or woman. It’s an incredible feeling – noiseless, weightless, fearless fun – and what’s more, it doesn’t hurt when you fall over. Once you’ve experienced it, there’s no turning back.

The problem is finding enough of the stuff. It doesn’t snow in the mountains every day, and when it does, there’s usually a feeding frenzy of twitching powder addicts – not just snowboarders, but skiers, too – desperate for their fix. In any popular resort, the first tracks have been laid by 9am. By 10.30am, the more accessible stuff has been skied out and by midday, well, you should have been there two hours ago.

Yet here I am, newly arrived in the Austrian resort of Ischgl, gazing at a sight I never expected to see. Standing at the side of a red run, I’m looking down at a powder-laden slope that drops gently away from the piste edge. There are a few tracks in it, but it’s largely virgin. This is odd. The last snow-fall here was three days ago, so how can so much lie here untouched and ignored, within easy reach of the piste?

As if to reinforce the point, two skiers whizz past us on the machine-groomed snow, oblivious to the near-pristine powder field alongside them.

“It looks good, but it must lead nowhere,” I tell Grant, my companion.

“No, look at the tracks: people have done it,” he replies optimistically.

“Yeah, but did they end up having to schlep their way out of it?” I wonder.

That’s the problem with powder. As long as you are moving, it will support even the largest beer belly. But once you stop, you drop. Any long, flat section will kill your momentum and you’ll sink, cartoon-style, into a cold white sea. From there, your only way out is a strength-sapping, thigh-burning wade through snow that is sometimes waist-deep. Do that more than a couple of times and your day is over.

We drop a few metres further along the piste to get a better look. Grant is right. There is an exit back onto the piste – no flat section. All we’re going to be doing is taking a short cut, albeit a delirious, adrenaline-soaked one.

Technically, there is an avalanche risk here. Today, it’s rated 3/5 in this part of Austria, which is significant, but we are in an area that’s avalanche-controlled because there is a piste that passes below us. If there were a big danger of snow slides, the authorities would have closed this section of the mountain. All the same, we agree to go one at a time for safety’s sake.

And then we let rip. Only five turns later, I lose my balance and eat snow. The gradient is steep enough to roll over and get going again, Grant’s laughter is still audible further up the hill. Whooping with delight, we each complete the section, exiting further down for a cappuccino stop.

Soon we are back at the top, courtesy of Ischgl’s efficient network of chair-lifts, some of which have heated seats. Our powder find proves to be no one-off. We keep coming across accessible “freshies” just sitting there, ignored by Ischgl’s patrons. From the top of Palinkopf we scope out a long, winding run towards Samnaun, the duty-free Swiss resort just over the border, which has customs officers on skis chasing suspiciously laden rucksacks. Again, there is only a handful of tracks and plenty of space to make our own.

Everywhere, Ischgl’s clientele seem blind to its treasure. Could it be that those who have made it up the slopes are still hungover from last night? It wouldn’t surprise me. Ischgl is one of the nightlife capitals of the Alps, and the extended party I saw in its many bars yesterday was extraordinary.

It all started with a couple of innocent alfresco gluhweins at Romantic Hüttn’, situated temptingly at the foot of the slopes. Next door, at the Trofana Alm, a wilder party was already kicking into gear. By 4pm, the place was a heaving mass of people stamping their ski boots and singing in unison to soft rock, Abba and something I can only describe as electro-oompah. Down the road, the Schatzi bar of Hotel Elizabeth played pop and house classics while girls in miniature dirndls danced on the bar. Briefly, the partying slowed, to allow the resort’s ski and snowboard instructors to put on a synchronised show on the last stretch of piste back into town. Then it sped up again and carried on at full pelt until 2am at Kuhstall, a bar in the centre of town.

The great thing about being British in Ischgl is that there are not many of us. Unlike St Anton, which has a very cosmopolitan atmosphere, Ischgl is stoutly Germanic and we Brits are still something of a novelty.

Everyone wants to be your friend. At Kuhstall, we were befriended by Michael and Ulrig, two amiable Bavarians who had come from Munich for the weekend. “It is going to be tough on the slopes tomorrow,” I joked, nodding toward our newly filled steins of beer.

“The slopes tomorrow – you must be kidding!” Ulrig exclaimed. “We don’t come here to ski. We come to party.”

There was none of that surly undercurrent that gives British pubs and clubs an edge when too many people have drunk too much. The Germans and Austrians don’t seem to fight when they’re plastered. They just sing louder.

Most of them seem to like a lie-in, too. The next morning, we conclude that this is why the two of us have what seems to be the whole of Ischgl’s off-piste to ourselves. We keep doing laps of our favourite runs, and every time we get to the bottom, we look back up and see only two more tracks scored over the snow since the last time we were there. At the end of the day, we agree to ration ourselves to a couple of beers before dinner, so that we’re sharper tomorrow. We won’t find snow as good as this again for a very long time.

A week’s holiday in Ischgl costs from £575pp, including three-star B&B hotel accommodation and flights, with Crystal Ski (0871 231 5645, www.crystalski.co.uk)