Or, as it turns out, something pretty small. A one-way flight to Denver, the gateway to the Rocky Mountains, now only threatens to put a £129-sized dent in our credit cards (big up, Norwegian!) or cost £487 for a return with optional extended (hint: do it) stopover in Iceland with Icelandair. By the grace of the aviation gods, the financial ringfence that stopped all us normal non-billionaires from lugging our gear to the States more than once a year has been trampled down, allowing me, my terminal terror of parting with excessive cash, and my fellow on-a-budget folk, the very real opportunity to sail on by the short-haul check-ins and bumrush the transatlantic terminal for annual – even bi-annual – snow trips instead.

Cheap flights, of course, are only half the battle. Every winter rider knows that, no matter where you’re pointing your skis, there is a whole host of spicy financial meatballs to swallow once you arrive on your mountain. And none more so than the suck-it-up-and-just-spend-it essential lift pass. Yeah, I’d also heard horror stories of American passes spiralling to as high as $169 per day in super luxe Vail or hyper posh Aspen. Per. Day. Chriiist. But, to be honest, you’d need rocks in your head to pay that in 2019, not least because, chriiist, but because an Ikon Pass – a super-massive-hyper season pass new just last year – has shaken up the game by unlocking a whopping 28 world-class North American ski resorts for as little as $949 for the 2019/20 season (roughly £713 at the time of publication). There’s also, fyi, a slightly more limited Ikon Base Pass available for $649 (£488).

“Dumb and Dumber’s Harry… got his freakishly pink and stretchy tongue stuck to an icy lift here back in the early nineties”

That’s unlimited access to the likes of Mammoth, Winter Park and Squaw Valley, and seven days each at epic spots like Jackson Hole, Revelstoke, Sugarloaf and more – plenty enough to convince you to rebook your next flight across the pond as soon as you land back on home soil.

Oh, and if you casually happen to find yourself riding in Japan, Australia, New Zealand or Chile, your enthusiastic little pass will get you up hills there too, adding to a total of 78,716 skiable acres around the world. Compare that to the 1599CHF (£1250) you’d cough up for one of the most popular multi-resort season passes in Switzerland/Europe, the 4 Vallees Pass which grants you access to 410km of piste, and, well, yes, once you carry the one and divide that by the square root of itself and add the decimal point, that sure is some attractive maths, right there.

With any evidence of my sesh on the local fire water expunged from my bloodstream and breath by Chef Susan and her outrageous breakfast banana bread at Copper Mountain’s Toast & Co, I next wanted to track down the mythical ‘champagne powder’ that lay in, and only in, the nearby resort of Steamboat. Exactly why this high-end must-hit (which is the homegrown getaway of choice for Coloradan fart gag connoisseurs, Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame) gets super-light powder with just 6% water content, rather than the 15% other resorts have to slum it with, is still causing science boffins to scratch their beards.

One thing I didn’t need a test tube or Bunsen burner to discover, was just how insanely good it felt under skis while sliding through Steamboat’s famously never-ending aspen runs, even three days after the most recent dump. For real, you could spend the entire winter at this place and not hit all the tree lines you’d like to. And where once that privilege would have cost you a chunky $1400 to do, that Ikon Pass – with its unlimited days at Steamboat – has slashed the full season lift spend here by $451 (about £338).

“It’s enough to make me want to slide into some cowboy boots and belt out a rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner”

Despite the near infinite dreamy trees, icing sugar powder and the ‘Taco Beast’ – the world’s first on-piste street food truck/snowcat serving elk and chorizo tacos for just five bucks – there were still plenty of American heritage-soaked activities off the hill to tempt me out of my bindings.

Making like the people of the Ute Tribe, Colorado’s oldest inhabitants and stewing your muscles at one of the state’s plentiful natural hot springs is a gotta-do (the nearby Strawberry Park gets two thumbs up from me, although rumour has it that after dark things get a little more, er, nudey in there). Another absolute must is using everything you learned about horsecare in Red Dead Redemption 2 (feed it, whisper nice things in its ear, don’t park it on a railroad while you fish for the Legendary Sturgeon) to tread through knee-high wilderness powder on the back of a lazy steed.

Do that at Del’s Triangle 3 Ranch ($95 per rider), just 20 miles out from Steamboat, and you’ll meet real-life Colorado ski cowboys (like Ray, who informed me of the gory fate of his neighbour’s pooch) who lead lives that’ll make you question every single career, and every winter holiday, decision you’ve ever made.

Do It Yourself

Find more information about the Ikon Pass at ikonpass.com. Return winter flights with Icelandair from London Heathrow to Denver (via Reykjavik) start at £487 per person.

Rooms at Copper Mountain’s Tucker Mountain Lodge start at $173 per night. Four-bed luxury lodges at Steamboat’s One Steamboat Place start at $1,816 per night.

Car hire in Colorado can be made through rentalcars.com

You May Also Like

Best Beanies | Top 10

The Mpora Podcast | Episode 2