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They imagined I must be off hobnobbing with Heidi Klum and Claudia Schiffer in Aspen or Vail, two rather showbizzy resorts where your fur coat and your bling can prove as important as your skills on the slopes.

The truth is, though, that Colorado has a handful of other resorts that are far more accessible and affordable than the famous ones, but set in equally impressive chunks of the Rocky Mountains. Ideal for those of us who would rather spend a skiing holiday wearing ourselves out on the slopes and pottering around in a fleece and jeans in the evenings, than expend extra energy worrying about dancefloor divas and the price of a pina colada. In any case, why would you want to go people watching when the mountains themselves are just so stunning?

Plus, having tried French, Swiss and Italian resorts, I was a bit bored of the overcrowded Alps, where that last 100 metres of piste always seems to have become a murky pile of grey slush by 3pm and there’s a grumpy French family only too happy to ski over your feet as they push in to the lift queue. I longed for wide open slopes that only North America can provide.

And in Breckenridge and Winter Park, two resorts in easy reach of Denver airport, there they were. Just as when you first go to America and find that the roads are broader, the plates of food are twice as full and the people are twice as wide, so will you find that the ski slopes here are just, well, bigger. More spread out, with room to manoeuvre and nobody crashing into you. And then there are the friendly lift attendants and ski instructors and waitresses who really DO want you to have a nice day - in Colorado, even an altitude of 12,000 feet doesn’t seem to get in the way of American service culture.

Breckenridge is a historic town that is wholly in thrall to its mountains - if the locals aren’t skiing down them then they’re taking their dogs hiking up them or riding their bikes around them. Indeed, it was the treasure inside them there hills that led the original white settlers to this part of the mid-west, with the gold rush. (Though the Ute Indians, who felt a close affinity to the bears that still roam in them, were here first.) The gold miners left their wooden Victorian houses behind, with many now housing art galleries, restaurants and museums. Winter Park, however, lacks any real town
centre, and a glut of new-build condos means some of its character has been lost - though every local will proudly tell you why the mountain
Mary-Jane was named after a lady who “entertained” the gentlemen of the gold-rush.

But the skiing in both resorts is just glorious. Enough black runs to keep an advanced skier excited day in day out, especially in Breckenridge, which boasts the highest lift in North America (if not the world), taking you to the 13,000 feet summit of Peak 8. But there’s also masses for lesser mortals to do, especially in Winter Park, with its gentle wooded slopes that you can meander around for hours without running out of safe, fun routes. It’s a cliché to say there’s something for everybody but since Winter Park also boasts the largest disabled ski centre in the world - look out for people moving around on some extraordinary customised contraptions - there really is. The only people who might get bored are snowboarders - since a lot of the
gentler runs involve flatter sections, while the tougher ones are full of moguls, though you can easily avoid those.

There isn’t much apres ski at all in Winter Park, while nightlife fares a bit better in Breckenridge, home to the oldest bar in the west (which houses some great local beers and a strange man dressed as a rabbit.) But still, if you’ve got teenagers with you who are expecting a clubbing scene like in, say, Meribel, you might have to persuade them into some other pursuits, like dog sled rides or tubing, which sound dreadful but turned out to be huge fun. Especially after a hard day’s ski-ing, where you have about ten different things to fasten on one ski boot alone, there is huge relief in sliding down a slope with your bum plonked inside an old rubber tyre. And that’s it. It’s not rocket science, although you do go as fast as one (so take a big group of
friends with you and do it holding hands - we laughed until we cried, and watched the sunset as we tubed.)

Of course, if you’re a single woman looking for love you might be in luck, since local men far outnumber women here (a throwback to the mining days perhaps, when most women got through several husbands as they kept on dying down those shafts).  Beware though- as I was warned by one rather attractive lady, “the odds are good but the goods are odd.” So probably best to stick to the skiing.

For more information on Colorado, visit our destination guide

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About the writer:

Sophie is a freelance journalist who specialises in analysing popular culture and writes regularly for the The Times and Independent on Sunday. Her work has also appeared in the Guardian, Time Out, Asiaweek, South China Morning Post and the New Statesman and, to her shame, she was also the voiceover artist on the 0898 gossip phonelines on two series of Big Brother. She also likes to ski.