The odd couple

Two resorts in Utah have come together to offer European-style skiing in the US. And, surprisingly, it's a marriage made in heaven, says Stephen Wood

In the rear-view mirror the massive flatness west of Salt Lake City is still visible, but up ahead the craggy gorge is narrowing, and the sky lowering: the landscape seems to be playing a sort of theme-park trick, ignoring thousands of miles to butt the Great Plains up against an Alpine Valley. Yet on the drive into Little Cottonwood Canyon, you feel as if you are going nowhere slowly. The impression of speed is correct: in some places the maximum permitted on the two-lane road is 30mph. And "nowhere" is accurate too, in a sense. The road is a dead end.

But just before Little Cottonwood Canyon Road runs its course, it passes two ski resorts on the right-hand side. First comes Snowbird; a mile later, Alta follows. Although they are only 30 miles from Salt Lake City airport, these are not cosmopolitan places: you won't find them in the brochures of any of the top six UK ski operators. Alta, in fact, doesn't even claim the status of a resort. With just a handful of lodges scattered on the valley floor, its styles itself merely "Alta Ski Area".

Yet both Alta and Snowbird are held in awe by those US skiers who value substance over style. For the powdery snow that falls on Little Cottonwood Canyon – an annual average of more than 40ft – is what justifies the state of Utah's "The greatest snow on earth" slogan, displayed on its vehicle-registration plates.

Despite their proximity, Alta and Snowbird have only recently got together. They make an improbable couple, like the actress Jodie Foster with Ozzy Osbourne according to a US ski magazine – although that's more amusing than informative. Oddly, Ted Turner with Jane Fonda makes a better metaphor: "oddly", because (if you don't read the showbiz pages) the creator of CNN, now the biggest ranch-land owner in the US, was until recently married to the actress and workout guru.

Created in 1938 (as was Turner), Alta is old and unreconstructed – critics would say literally so, given the vintage of some of its lifts. To get an idea of how gnarly it can seem, you have only to look at the "frequently asked questions" page on its website. Ten questions are quoted, and among the answers four begin with a flat "no". Probably only the fact that it is impractical to respond in the negative to "How do I get to Alta?" or "What do I wear?" prevented there being more.

Given most Utah resorts' eager-to-please marketing, Alta's attitude is almost as appealing as its slopes, which have everything from gentle tree-skiing to terrifying gullies and every type of piste in-between. But Alta calls itself a ski area, and that is precisely what it is. To the question "Do you allow snowboards?" the website offers its most notorious "no", adding that "Snowbird does, just down the road". If Alta is the ski area that time forgot, Snowbird is the resort that forgot which country it was in. Ted Johnson, who worked in the Alta Lodge, first saw the skiing potential of the mountain down the road; but it took the wealth of an Oklahoma oilman – almost all of it – for Snowbird to become a reality in 1971.

Dick Bass all-but bankrupted himself creating a resort unlike any other in Utah, or even in the US. As The Good Skiing Guide puts it, "Bass [was] apparently under the spell of the latest concrete additions in the French Alps".

The profile of the buildings at Snowbird's lift base is reminiscent of Flaine and Val Thorens; but the similarity does not extend inside. Where the interiors of French ski resorts' concrete towers are mean – in terms of space, furnishings, maintenance and so on – Snowbird's Cliff Lodge is generous to a fault. Some of its huge rugs, from Dick Bass's own collection, are worth $60,000 (£40,000); the atrium is 11 storeys high; the ski lockers are fitted with boot-warmers. While Alta is a place for hardy frontiersmen, its lodges linked together with an old-style (but actually quite new) rope-tow, Snowbird is a "city in the sky" fantasy, all sushi and spa treatments, cappuccinos and conferences. At least until you get out on its slopes.

Despite its rugged style, Alta's ski area is actually more charming than challenging: gradients are generally as friendly as the locals, and the gentle pace of the lifts is matched by many of the skiers. The handful of very difficult pitches are at the ski area's extremes – which makes a stark contrast with Snowbird. Head up the latter's mountain on the "tram" (a simple cable-car to you and me, but a rare, European contrivance to US skiers), and if you turn back towards the lift base you are faced with an awesome descent. The double-black-diamond Great Scott piste looks like a ski jump, its narrow track apparently shooting straight out into the air.

The misty weather on my visit perhaps made it look more dramatic; but exploration below revealed alarmingly steep stuff on either side, in the ski area proper and on the off-piste terrain. It's not just Snowbird's buildings that echo French resorts; so does the skiing.

Head away from the resort, and you drop down the gentler, Mineral Basin face. At the bottom, the Baldy Express lift runs diagonally up to a ridge between the 11,051ft Sugarloaf and the marginally lower Mt Baldy. On the other side lies Alta.

Both Snowbird and Alta have big ski areas by US standards; put together, they have the third biggest area in the country, with 4,700 skiable acres. And that is what happened almost exactly a year ago: the two areas were connected by a joint lift-pass, a manned gatepost on the ridge (to stop errant snowboarders crossing into Alta) and a new lift.

The marriage got off to a rocky start, thanks to the locals' established tastes, the snowboarding schism and the relative cheapness of the $40 Alta-only lift-pass. So this season the cost of the joint pass has been reduced, to $64. That's a small price to pay for skiing Ted Turner and Jane Fonda on the greatest snow on earth.

Stephen Wood travelled with Ski Independence (0870 555 0555; www.ski-independence.co.uk). It offers packages to Snowbird starting at £962 in January, including flights, transfers and a week's accommodation. More information: Alta (00 1 801 359 1078; www.altaskiarea.com); Snowbird (00 1 801 742 2222; www.snowbird.com)