Skiing in knee-deep fluffy powder down a run called North Bowl that seemed to last for ever, I saw the future of skiing in North America, and I liked what I saw.

	The knee-deep fluffy powder of Revelstoke Mountain Resort

In what I consider to be the most exciting development in snow business on either side of the Atlantic over the past 20 years, Canada's new, billion-dollar Revelstoke Mountain Resort - RMR - is poised to become one of the world's most thrilling destinations.

What's more, it suits everyone from novice to heli-skiing powder pig.

Within less than a decade I predict that RMR will earn its place as one of the Top 10 Truly Greats, alongside Aspen, Jackson Hole, Whistler, St Anton, Chamonix, Val d'Isère, Courchevel, Verbier and Zermatt.

Until now, little of note has happened in sleepy, remote Revelstoke in the wilds of British Columbia. Winter is long, summer is brief, and the prize exhibit in the local museum is a left-handed chain-saw.

The 8,500 people who live here, on the banks of the great Columbia River, have been quietly going about their business of mining and lumber since the last spike in the line of the trans-continental Canadian Pacific Railway was hammered home in 1885.

Over the past 30 years its situation in a valley sandwiched between the Monashee and Selkirk mountain ranges has made it the world capital of helicopter skiing - about 12metres of snow falls during an average winter.

But heli-ski numbers are limited, and the occasional chatter of a chopper overhead has hardly helped the economy. Trains and timber are not what they were, and the town has been in slow decline for decades.

However, shortly after 9am on the Saturday before Christmas all that changed dramatically. The first of the 2,000 skiers who had queued since before dawn climbed aboard the eight-person Revelation gondola for the first two-mile public ride up tree-lined Mount Mackenzie.

They found a giant of a mountain with unlimited potential on a scale that challenges almost every other major ski destination worldwide.

Presently it has only two lifts, but these access 27 marked runs and enough off-piste to keep even the hungriest skier or snowboarder happy for a fortnight.

By the time we got back down to the bottom my companion claimed he'd skied more turns than in the whole of last winter. So long and challenging is the descent that the average visitor at present manages only 1.5 gondola rides a day.

By next year the mountain will have two more lifts and a vertical drop of 1,829metres, making it the longest in North America - and, indeed, one of the longest in the world.

The drop in Tignes from the Grande Motte to Val Claret, for example, is 1,400metres, while Whistler Peak to Whistler Creek is 1,609metres. Only the thigh-burning descent from the Klein Matterhorn to Cervinia, in Italy, exceeds Revelstoke - by just four metres.

At the moment most of the terrain is strictly for advanced skiers, with some exceptional rugged off-piste that is reminiscent of Alta, in Utah. But next season new lifts will open up plenty of novice and intermediate runs. When completed in 15 years, the resort should boast 21 lifts and 115 runs set in 10,000 acres that can been skied - more than any other North American resort.

From the Telegraph - Read more of the story

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.