Imagine finding the steepest, most frightening looking peak strewn with rocks, deep couloirs and vertical drops. Then climb to the top, click into your bindings and throw yourself off. If all goes well, you should arrive at the bottom a couple of minutes later after executing the odd bone-jarring 25m jumps, followed by a quick 360 and ending with a 60mph burst of speed.
I could not imagine it either, which is why, despite a half-hearted invitation to ride with the current world freeride champion, I kept my skis firmly cramponed to the piste 1,000m or so below.
If the hype is to be believed freeriding is the new snowboarding, and Tignes, one of the highest ski resorts in the French Alps, has set itself up as the freeride capital of Europe. Where once skiers feared to tread off piste, new ski design has allegedly made deep powder accessible even to the intermediate skier - which is me.
With sales plummeting as snowboarding has stolen much of the youth market, the ski manufacturers realised they had to act fast if the sport was not to become confined to a dwindling band of old age pensioners. Their response was to produce the freeride ski: shorter and wider to keep you afloat on powder, made with more flexible material to allow you to land jumps without snapping a cruciate ligament, and twin tips - a ski that turns upwards at both ends - to allow backwards skiing and access to a half-pipe, previously the exclusive domain of snowboarders. This was a ski for the new generation - also me.
I may be approaching 30 at the speed of a top downhill skier, but I'm still vaguely young at heart, and this ski was going to be my salvation. Tired of abuse from boarder friends who ridiculed my inability to venture off piste without ending up buried in a snow drift, the freeride ski was going to make me a powder hound.
My confidence lasted about as long as it took to make the six-minute journey from the heart of the resort to the top of the Grande Motte funicular railway at 3,000m. With the Grand Motte glacier towering above us, my guide stopped and pointed his skis in the direction of what looked to me like a vertical face of snow. "This looks OK," he said. I sidled up to the edge, gulped, and sidled back again. "Do you know, I think I'll just warm up my legs a bit with a run down here," I said, pointing at the groomed piste that gently made its way down the side of the mountain. By the time we reached the bottom, he had me sussed. We made our way to the other side of the valley and a gentler slope.
That is the thing about Tignes - it may not be the prettiest resort in the Alps, but for the skiing purist, it is hard to better. Jointly marketed with Val d'Isère as "L'Espace Killy", after its most famous son, Tignes and Val d'Isère offer almost unlimited powder fields, loads of on-piste cruising for all levels, as well as several snow parks.
Arriving in the resort can be a bit of a shock. Instead of the pretty Alpine villages we passed through during the four-hour drive from Lyon airport, Tignes looks like a piece of Benidorm stuck on to the side of a mountain, with ugly 1960s blocks making up much of the accommodation.
But the town planners have tried hard to rectify past sins. The resort is split into three levels and has undergone a multi-million-pound facelift over the past five years. Roads that used to run through the resort have been buried in underground tunnels and an enormous new reception chalet has been built from where you can do anything, from buying your ski pass to booking next year's chalet. New developments are also on the way, including sticking wooden cladding on the hotels in an attempt to make them prettier.
A free bus service runs between the three levels of the resort that will take you back to your hotel if you have misread your piste map and find yourself at the wrong end with the lifts just closed for the night.
The buses run until late in the evening and can also be used to get home from the bars at night, although to be honest if you are more interested in après-ski than enjoying a day out on the slopes, Tignes is probably not the resort for you. Harry's bar is probably the pick of the bunch, with beer prices similar to the UK (about £2) and a live band on Thursday nights. If you want to eat out, a fondue with wine costs around £12 at L'Eterlou.
But while Tignes might not be pleasing to the eye, the surrounding scenery certainly is. The mountain cirque - offering a 360-degree panorama - provides spectacular views both from the resort and the slopes.
As we made our way across the valley, up above the professional freeriders were still doing their stuff on the face of Les Tufs, where the freeride world championships were held this week. Previously the world championships have been held in Alaska, but variable snow conditions saw the event move to Europe for the first time in its history this year. Watching the competitors hurtle down the slope made me more determined to find my feet, or should that be skis, on powder.
As I pushed my way off the piste everything went well for about 10ft, until a fatal flaw in my skiing resurfaced - at the first sign of trouble, my instinct is to lean backwards. I dug myself out of the snow, and gingerly picked myself up, my guide generously blaming the conditions for my inability to stay upright. I was feeling a bit pathetic, but after speaking to Guerlain Chicherit, until this week at least the reigning freeride world champion, I strangely felt a good deal better. He told me that once he has finished freeriding his ambition is to break the world in-line skating record by being towed behind a car at more than 300mph. I might not be able to ski down Les Tufs, but at least I'm not certifiable.
Way to go
Jamie Wilson's trip to Tignes was organised by the Ski Club of Great Britain (www.skiclub.co.uk 020-8410 2000) and Virgin.net (www.virgin.net/travel) with flights from Stansted to Lyon on Buzz (www.buzzaway.com). A Ski Club rep is based in Tignes and holidays start from £495 a week, graded by skiers' standards. Membership to the Ski Club costs £45 individual, £66 family and £10 under 24s.
