One mountain that gives me good memories is Red mountain in BC. Its inland from Vancouver by about a 12hr drive and as you get further into the interior the colder it gets.
The coast range with the resorts of Whistler and Blackcombe get big dumps of snow but its often accompanied by rain.
Red however gets pure champagne powder and it stays and doesnt melt away,
The place closest to Red is Roseland, an old gold mining town and the ski hill started as a sort of ski club for the area. You wouldnt call it a resort on the european scale because its small with about 300m of vertical drop.
But the thing is the terrain, 70% of the runs are un-marked off piste with lift access and are inside the boundry, this means that the ski patrol sweeps the whole hill at the end of each day for stragglers! The majority of it is in the trees which makes map reading interesting! But at the end of the day they all spit you out on to "Long squaw"the run ...
I spent a season in Chamonix once, I guess a lot of snowboards do. I lived in town and brought a hugely expensive valley pass that covered all of the disjointed bits that make up the resort.
But in fact I spent 90% of my time boarding in Argentier.
I would drive up in my battered old VW golf day after day, descending seracs, crevasses, the grande montet, la poubelle, pas de chevre and all of the stuff that people talk about in the bar, I found it intoxicating!
In truth it's not all extreme, there's Mum, Dad and the kids on the piste and the moguls can become like slots with no exits! Sometimes the snow conditions can get pretty icy too, but hey, there is some great stuff to do.
One day I remember getting 4 runs on Lavencher in a meter of fresh powder in the morning, then taking the Pas de chevre back to town via the mer de glace! Trouble was that the car was up the top!
Anyway, it was a great season, I was so broke that I had to sel...