Late March in New York. The dirty, plough-driven snow on the sidewalks was retreating to the gutters and spring was at last arriving. More importantly, skiing was over and I could luxuriate in my winter’s achievement. A lifelong non-skier only a few months before, I had successfully risen to the taunts – “You don’t ski? Excuse me?” – of my snow-obsessed friends. My beginner status already a mere memory, I could now carve my way down an intermediate “blue square” trail and, when the mood or lunchtime digestif took me, descend a “black diamond” without first telling my wife that I had always loved her. I was a skier.

Or so I thought. But my tormentors had another challenge. “Skiing in the east is all very well,” they said, “but the west is where the real mountains are. That’s where the real snow is.”

What, I wondered, had I been skiing on already? On reflection, I recognised one of the great divides in American skiing mythology. It is commonly believed that the sport takes place on snow. But in the eastern US – at least in the Catskills, where I had done all my skiing – it would be more accurate to say that it happens on a very large lump of ice over which is scattered a thin and irregular layer of snow, like icing sugar on a vast boiled sweet. This would quickly become, in the jargon, “skied off”, leaving one in the afternoon hours to leap desperately from patch to patch of beleaguered snow. Occasionally grass was actually visible beneath the ice or, even more disturbingly, could be seen growing through it.

Next year, perhaps, I would find out for myself what it was like to ski on “real” snow at a “real” mountain. Or perhaps this year. This was, I reasoned, a challenge that demanded a swift and decisive response. A week later my wife and I were on a flight to Salt Lake City, deep in the Utah Rockies.

Arriving at Snowbird, our chosen resort, I looked up at the mountain to see what all the fuss was about and felt a tremor of fear when I found that I could barely see it. In front of me was a sheer wall of white. Everything above was lost in the clouds. It occurred to me that I had never skied down anything whose height could not be taken in at one glance. So this was a real mountain. I went straight to the lodge and bought a helmet.

The next morning I entered a cable car – a far cry from the excruciatingly slow chair lifts I was used to in upstate New York – and ascended through the Middle Air to the Upper Kingdom. Huge rocks jutted out at hideous angles to the vertical mountain face. My fellow riders, all brandishing skies twice as long as mine, jauntily identified minute crevices they had sped down the previous day. This was a real mountain, and that looked like real snow beating against the window, but I was feeling less and less of a real skier.

I emerged into a howling, arctic wilderness, barely able to see my skis beneath me. A ski patrol member, sensing a Snowbird novice, told me to stick by her: she knew an easy route to the bottom. As we made our way down, ghostly bands of skiers would briefly emerge and disappear back into the blizzard. The promised blue square trail should by any sane standard have been ranked a black diamond – a Snowbird characteristic, I was later told.

Gradually, however, the air began to clear and I became aware of an unfamiliar sensation. The customary icy rattle and chatter beneath my skis gave way to a silky viscosity, as if my feet were gliding through cream. Powder! Not deep, only shin-high, but my first taste of “real” snow. I was flying. And continued to do so for some time. I had been used to a descent flashing by in a matter of seconds, followed by 10 minutes of tedium on the chairlift. Here you could ski for what seemed like an eternity and never reach the bottom.

Not only that, but real mountains apparently came in twos. For only a small addition to the regular lift ticket price, you could ski right over to Alta, the next-door resort. Two mountains to play on! I felt like a colossus.

One of the few resorts in the US still to bar snowboards, Alta had an austere, purist feel (“Committed to preserving and protecting the skiing experience” in its own words) that complemented the self-assured luxury of Snowbird. Where Snowbird offered what amounted to four-star hotels at its base, with sushi bars and heated ski lockers, Alta had rustic lodges and cafeterias serving burgers and fries.

But what skiing! Alongside vast bowls of powder, Alta boasted wide-open, seemingly endless groomed slopes from top to bottom. And here blue square meant blue square. I had, I should admit, bought my first pair of skis just for the trip (on the dubious principle that a real mountain demands real, not rented, equipment) and this was the perfect place to put them through their paces.

But skiing isn’t all about skiing, even on real mountains. Especially not on real mountains. When the snowstorms cleared, the peaks from which I had been so perilously dropping were revealed in an awesome but tranquil beauty. Virtually empty in the first week of April, the silent slopes and pines of Utah’s Cottonwood Canyon reached up imperiously into the immaculately blue sky and made the chair lift alone an experience to be savoured.

Was I spoiled for my hometown slopes of the East? Not at all. I would return as a conquering hero and assert the prowess of a now-seasoned downhill campaigner.

But what is this I see advertised? Heli-skiing? They drop you from a helicopter on the top of a mountain of your choice? Now that sounds like real skiing…

Ed Holland is the FT.com deputy news editor in New York