'You can have me for half a day for $350 or the full day is $500.' I considered the blond curls, white teeth and sunburnt smile on offer. 'I'll take the full day,' I decided.

Men at Whistler don't come cheap, but the quality is excellent. From the well-filled alpine jumpers who open every door to the personal ski guides, the resort gleams with good health and well-developed quads. Not all the men are available but at the ski school you can hire an escort to carry your skis, praise your prowess and laugh at your jokes for around $90 an hour. I engaged Peter Weiland. Originally from Germany, Peter had found the good life on the west coast of Canada, coaching in the winter and running mountain bike tours of the Rockies in the summer. But before we could work on my position we had to get back to basics.

'Are you wearing your underwear?' he inquired. When you're going a mile high, thermals are essential, and I was dispatched to the lavatory to add a few layers. It's hard to act the femme fatale when you look like the Michelin man, but I applied my lip balm with a defiant flourish.

With an official at my side we cut to the head of the lift queue and creaked slowly up Blackcomb Mountain. Whistler has a lot of promising statistics: the biggest ski area and the biggest vertical drop in North America, the most bars per capita in Canada.

'There's something wrong with this lift,' Peter muttered as we juddered past a pylon, and the drop seemed to grow in size. To distract myself I concentrated on the bear warnings posted on the pylons. For most of the season the brown bear lies curled cosily in its dens, while thousands of skiers thunder overhead. By March you see them foraging for food on the slopes.

Peter dismissed my fears: 'They almost never attack as long as you know how to handle them.'

By the time we left the lift we were surrounded by a wilderness of mountains and blue-green glaciers. Only one road runs through these Rockies, and unconquered ranges stretch into the distance. The Whistler and Blackcomb mountains have been adapted for skiing, but they are far from tame. Whistler, with its sheer drops and rocky descents, is famed for its 'xtreme' skiing (always without the e).

I watched in horror as figures hurled themselves off impossible cliffs and jumped into impenetrable crevasses. Only the absence of corpses littering the slopes proved these antics to be humanly possible. 'There are a lot of injuries here,' Peter admitted. I had already noticed that everyone around the hotel pool was pregnant or limping. 'But mostly they happen to inexperienced skiers. In eight years I have never had an injury to a pupil or myself. But then I do a lot of work on my body.'

We swept slowly down the mountain with frequent breaks for Peter to correct my technique and massage my ego. 'That's fantastic,' he cried at the bottom of one slope. 'Great leg work. Given time I could have you skiing anything.'

I preened and demurred modestly. I was a long way from conquering black runs, surely? 'Not at all,' he assured me. 'One woman came from Seattle on her own last year and hired me for the whole week. We made a lot of progress.'

Most women who hire Peter seem to come alone. Partners may find it difficult to match his machismo. This is a man who spends his days off trekking to the top of the glacier with animal skins attached to his skis to give him grip, ripping them off and skiing into uninhabited territory. 'I like to sleep out a few nights,' he explained.

I thought of the temperatures in the minus-thirties, and shivered as we climbed into the gondola. I assumed this must be the gondola famed as a 'quickie' haven for the single skier, though by the end I had managed to remove only my hat. Peter stretched out next to me, utterly relaxed. 'I'm sorry if I seem tired,' he apologised, 'I was up all night with my three-day-old baby.'

'You should be at home,' I said guiltily. 'That's OK, I finish at four.' Thoughts of après-ski entertainment melted away.

'My wife was fantastic, no pain relief at all,' Peter said. 'She just worked her way through it.' I thought of my own epidurals with affection and a slight sense of shame. Determined to prove my worth I pummelled my knees down hills and tried to keep my mind off the hotel spa. So when Peter suggested trying to ski some moguls I forgot I was a soft, incompetent mother of two, and leapt from bump to bump like a feckless teenager until I fell with a twist and a pop, and a fire ignited in my knee.

'I hope you're not going to be my first injury,' Peter reprimanded. 'Oh no, I'm fine,' I assured him. I closed my eyes and tried to work through my pain.

How to find your man

Book with the Whistler ski and snowboard school (00 1 604 932 3434). Prices range from $299 (£129) for an off-season afternoon to $545 (£235) for a full day in peak season. The fee does not include equipment rental or lift pass.

Operators to Whistler include: Thomson (0870 606 1470). Seven nights' full board in Chalet Sunpath from £765 per person. Ski Independence (0870 555 0555). Seven nights' room-only at the five-star Fairmont Chateau Whistler from £831. Lotus Supertravel (020 7962 9933). Seven nights' room-only at the three-star Listel Whistler Hotel from £695. All prices are based on two sharing and include flights and transfers.