car-free village, dotted with ancient hay barns and untroubled by notions of glamour. The only problem with the place is that the glacier takes up so much room, forcing the pistes to either side of the valley. A couple of them are absolute scorchers, though, and you -- the highest figures for Alist Alpine resorts. The pistes suit intermediates best, but there's some fantastic skiing and boarding to be done in the powder, too, and few of the regular -- There isn't a vast amount of skiing to be done here (the resort is home to 110km of pistes, compared with 300km in Tignes, above). But the crowds, traffic and lift queues that are a feature of most modern -- all the more impressive as a result. Beneath it stretch some of the most reliable pistes in skiing. They're almost all above the tree line, as in Tignes (above), so you'll be skiing by sense of smell if the clouds come down. But you'll always find snow here, with more over the border on the glacier above Zermatt. One piste in particular makes the trip worthwhile: Red 7, which runs through 8km and 1,400 vertical metres, and is widely regarded as the best intermediate piste in skiing. -- Dolomites. Here, the locals have discovered that their cold but dry climate is ideally suited to snow-making, and now 90% of the region's pistes are protected. -- there is will be well groomed, and won't be chopped up into a cruddy, bumpy mess by thousands of skiers. Fact is, many of us prefer perfectly groomed pistes to deep snow anyway, and will be happier in these conditions than in a foot of fresh powder. -- Year and Presidents' Weekend (February 16-18 next year), the vast billionaires' dens are empty - and so are those expensively manicured slopes. It's absurd, really, given the quality of the pistes, which are north-facing, the altitude (the skiing lies between 12,500ft and