A steaming mug of hot chocolate with Mont Blanc lurking on the horizon is as heady as a double shot of schnapps.

And even with the thermometer hovering just above freezing, there’s no need even for a hat. The sun is high in the sky. Everything is sparkling – including me.

We’re on the veranda of a cafe 3,000ft above Morzine, in the massive Portes du Soleil region, where the only blemish is the thought of how on earth I am going to get back down to the resort in one piece.

Go snow! Attractive Les Gets is full of tree-lined runs to stretch yourself on

This is my first full week of skiing, but I am on holiday with a assemble of experts who take the downhill-pitching-with-gusto approach.
Luckily, this vast ski area is made for groups of all abilities and every degree of daredevil. Les Gets and Avoriaz are within simple reach – as is Switzerland – there are runs of fearful gradient down to pretty tree-lined blue meanders (exactly what I’m after).
But, in holiday moral fiber, we start out together – the boys very nearly all on boards, the girls on skis. We are in Les Gets – only a ten-minute gondola ride from Morzine and a ten-minute clump from our chalet door.

The boarders flip about in the powdery snow beside the piste looking cool and I traverse across the slope – with extraordinary control – even as everyone waits for me at the bottom, giggling.

After a sustaining lunch we do more of the same. Well, not quite. Here, there’s no need to do the same run twice, and at the end of the day we swoosh all the way to the bottom.

Morzine, France: No fewer than 12 resorts make up the Portes du Soleil skiing mecca – 80 per cent in France

It’s January, but the snow is crunchy and Morzine determinedly neither white nor chocolate-box. The Christmas lights might be up, but it isn’t quite cheerful. It’s damp. Not so the apres-ski, which is rowdy.

The relief at having completed the day without being carted off by the blood wagon is enough to send me into a contented slump, but there are people partying hard. Stag dos raise the tempo.

They’ve cut a flash on the snow in superman outfits and horrifyingly cold mankinis. We avoid them, and opt lazily for the Jacuzzi and aperitifs back at our chalet – aptly named Alaska.
We are sharing it with three other couples – who are not all tickled to be with a assemble of friends as excitable as huskies. Bunking up with others make this luxurious style of holiday affordable, even if it means there’s a rush for the best spots at the dinner table.
The bedrooms are huge enough if you want to relax in private, and the shared areas are enormous – perfect for DVD-watching should you sprain a wrist on your first run.

Delight in the view: Skiers ascend above the cloud on a chairlift over the resorts of Avoriaz and Morzine

The secret ingredient is our chef, Barry. He is responsible for airily creamy scrambled eggs in the morning, irresistible cakes in the afternoon and a sumptuous three-course dinner in the evening.
We want to bring him home with us. Without the six hours of skiing a day, we’d be enormous. But mountain air and gluttony makes for a far deeper take a nap than I ever manage at home in London.
The week follows a pleased pattern of tea (served in bed), breakfast, ski, vin chaud, ski better, lunch, ski lazily, cake, Jacuzzi, dinner, slumber. One evening a spa team visit to pummel our newly strained muscles, managing to avoid the deliciously purple bruises. Wonderful.

My skiing progresses steadily, until the last day when I fall off the lift, slide backwards down the mountain and trip up in a restaurant when I’m not even in skis. Never mind.
We try out all the resorts and learn better, thicker and more velvety snow in Switzerland. The journey over the border involves a 15-minute lift ride – La Mossettes-France – which, when the weather hardens, is very nearly unbearably fortifying. Too cold for tears.

 

Ice moves: Daredevils are more than catered for in this ski area, as well as novices

The red runs here are controllable even for me, even if on the day we are there, the snow is puffing back up the mountain so it seems as if you are skiing into the spout of a boiling kettle.
Avoriaz attracts crowds, which is off-putting when it is icy, not least because of the slicing noise made by boarders cruising down behind you.
It is a self-contained resort up the mountain and a extraordinary sight. It was built to blend in with the mountain, which it does – from a distance. Close to, it’s an imposing set of high-rise tower blocks; going up in a lift, passing them, makes you feel particularly precarious.
The slopes in Les Gets are cooler, even if with less of those moral fiber-soaring views. But it’s still perfectly silent up and away from it all – and that is perhaps the best treat of all.

Travel facts

VIP Ski (0844 557 3119, vip-chalets.com) offers seven nights at CLUB Alaska from £759 pp based on two sharing, including return flights from Gatwick, transfers and full-board in catered chalet.
VIP Ski is offering free lift passes for anyone travelling to CLUB Alaska, February 19 and 26, 2012, if booked by December 10, 2011. Quote vip-mail22 on booking.