Live the high life heli-skiing in the Swiss Alps

IT'S the Royals' favourite winter playground, Richard Branson has a home in town and the Beckhams are regulars on the slopes.

In the star-studded Swiss ski resort of Verbier, even the chair lifts are named after celebrities, from James Blunt to Diana Ross, who is married to a local.

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My lift pass could include a singalong with them both and I would still hate ski lifts.

The queues, the swaying and my tendency to face-plant when disembarking make it my least favourite part of snowboarding.

If you are rich enough, there is a more exclusive way to get up the mountain - by helicopter.

The risky sport of heli-skiing is illegal in most European countries. But in Switzerland you can have a guided off-piste adventure for £275.

I wasn't allowed anywhere near a chopper until Antoine, my stubble-faced, bronzed guide taught me how not to die on the mountain.

Avalanches are a real danger when back-country skiing and it is each skier's responsibility to learn how to dig their friends from the snow with a shovel.

If stuck, your mates have 18 minutes to find you. Any longer and you will have run out of air.

That's why you do not head off-piste without an avalanche beacon. The device sends out a bleep to nearby beacons, hopefully leading rescuers to your location.

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Antoine made me practise for half an hour, digging up transceivers buried in snow until he was satisfied I would not let him die if the worst happened.

I had worked up an appetite by the time I sat down for dinner at Le Carrefour, a cosy mountaintop restaurant where I tucked into a steak presented on hot stone.

The next day, after a hearty breakfast at the Hotel Montpelier, we drove to the heli-port. It was a grassy field in the valley below town and where Antoine put a harness on me.

He assured me we were not going mountain climbing - at least, not on purpose. The gear was a precaution, Antoine explained, in case I fell down a crevice in a glacier, somehow survived and my body needed to be rescued.

Any sport that features an impromptu introduction to ice-climbing seems a bit extreme. But it was too late for second thoughts as our chopper came in to land.

There aren't many things cooler than a ride in a chopper.

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I barely had time to take in the Alpine panorama before we were alone on Plateau du Trient, watching the chopper disappear into the distance.

An endless field of virgin snow lay before us. Antoine explained that while it might look solid, beneath the blanket was a glacier full of ravines one of his guests had been unlucky enough to fall into.

I cut through the perfect powder with glee, trying not to think about the bridges of snow that were the only things standing between me and an icy end.

Halfway down, Antoine sprung a short hike on me. We needed to reach the neighbouring valley and the only way to get there involved a steep climb up a snowy mountainside with our boards on our backs.

Gasping for air, I finally missed the ski lifts.

As I crested the summit, the snowboarder's dream of Val d'Arpette lay before me. Thick powder followed by natural jumps, finished off with a challenging tree run to the car park at Lac de Champex.

With the mountain to myself and not so much as a single ski school to avoid, it was the most fun I have ever had on snow.

Despite three hours of racing downhill, I wanted the run to keep on going.

Back on the Diana Ross ski lift, I realised the musical tribute to heli-skiing summed up my feelings: "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."