Where have all the cowboys gone?

They're still in Wyoming, says Minty Clinch, but these days they're skiing and hanging out with movie stars at Jackson Hole

Who would have thought it? The body beautiful is storming Jackson Hole. And it's winning. That's Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a celebrated outpost for real men who herd cattle and shoot pool. Nowadays they ski a bit, too, taking their own daredevil lines through the chutes (couloirs), bowls and tangled rockscapes of Rendezvous Mountain, the most varied resort terrain in America. When they come down off the hill, they order pitchers of beer in the Mangy Moose Saloon in Teton Village. Or, in the event of being slightly less macho, a succession of the Moose's famously good margaritas. What they don't do is lie down quietly while a therapist invades their personal space with strategically placed hot rocks. Or expose themselves to an exfoliation scrub and a paint-pot mud wrap.

At least, they didn't, but the end of the age of innocence has been creeping in for a while now. As is the norm in the Rockies, real estate folk reckon that what works for Hollywood will work for you and me. In this case, the catalyst was Harrison Ford, the owner of a 600-acre ranch in the hills above the town of Jackson since the 1980s. The Hollywood star cashed in on his position at the top of the A list to make one film a year, spending the remaining eight months in his bolt-hole above the Snake River. In due course, his peers joined him. Shortly after, Adam Hirshfield, the former chairman of Paramount Studios, opened the Snake River Grill, Indiana Jones was seen dining there with the Raging Bull (Robert De Niro). Jackson Hole knew it had arrived.

Before you book a trip, you must answer a vital question: do you want to stay in downtown Jackson, a sprawl of low-cost accommodation built for the floods of summer visitors to neighbouring Yellowstone National Park, or in Teton Village, 12 miles away at the foot of the ski lifts? Jackson's main square is the old west at its most colourful, with a boardwalk and four arches made out of antlers – renewed by natural shedding from the animals that gather every winter in the Elk Refuge on the road to the airport.

The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, which dominates one side of the square, has stools shaped like western saddles, a rampant stuffed grizzly, pool tables and live music. The other sides offer excellent shops, many selling competitively priced factory outlet goods. The Old Yellowstone Garage round the corner serves the best Italian food I've ever eaten in America. For drinkers and shoppers, there is no other place to be.

Teton Village was purpose built for skiing, a small collection of hotels, bars and rental shops arranged around a car park. Visitors loved it for the convenience of getting from car or shuttle bus on to the slopes within five minutes. Mind you, it always took a little longer if you joined the queue for the aerial tram (cable car), the access point for stern powder challenges on Rendezvous Mountain and the Hobacks, not to mention the celebrated leap into the void at Corbet's Couloir. Until recently, après-ski was represented by the Mangy Moose, red-alert lively at 4.30pm, half asleep by 10.30. This made the base question pretty simple: if you skied or boarded till you dropped, you stayed in the Village; if you wanted a decent meal and evening entertainment, you stayed in town.

But not for much longer. By March, 2002, Teton Village had become Crane City, with the buzz word "outfill" on everyone's lips. Not "infill", which means filling in existing gaps, but "outfill", which means sprawling over existing snowscape. The mission is to increase the number of beds from 2,500 to 3,500 by September 2003, when the massive Four Seasons Resort, responsible for the largest group of cranes clustered at the base of the Bridger Gondola, is due to open, with a further 1,500 beds to be added as soon as possible.

The Snake River Lodge, proud owners of hot rocks and paint-pot mud wraps in their 17,000 sq ft Avanyu Spa, is already up and running, as is the Teton Club, a condo timeshare opposite the tram station. Their mistake was to landscape their frontage with young trees, a hit with several smart if mangy female moose and their young: easy eating for the animals, but a full-time guard job for the ski host who has to hold the protective rope against photo-happy crowds. For those who want to get away from village and town, the Amangani Hotel provides an in-between option on a bluff with spectacular views of the Teton range. A temple of marbled minimalist chic that finds favour with Oprah and non-skiing friends, it demands "Silence" in areas where the very rich are working out. There can be no greater tribute to the body beautiful than that.

By 2010, Teton Village will look like a larger version of Big Sky, a fairly new, fairly high-rise resort in remotest Montana. With an enjoyable four-hour road transfer between the two, Jackson Hole and Big Sky make an excellent two-centre combo holiday. Big Sky has two huge pluses: a state-of-the-art lift system covering three mountains and virtually no customers. All the base stations are moments away from the two main hotels, the luxurious Summit at Big Sky and the Huntley Lodge, named for the resort's founder, TV presenter Chet Huntley.

With instantly accessible nursery slopes, miles of immaculately groomed intermediate pistes and some really tough double black diamond runs, this is an ego blast for every kind of snow user. For experts, the hotspot is the Lone Peak Tram, a 15-passenger cable car that rises to 11,170ft, the chosen domain for Lonnie Ball, the first skier to go into Corbet's Couloir as a 19-year-old in the late 1960s. When questioned about this legendary feat, Ball shrugs modestly. "It was an accident. I was standing too near the edge of the cornice and I suddenly found myself falling. As I was on the ski patrol at the time, my greatest fear was that I'd be fired for reckless skiing."

Now in his 50s, he and his wife Mary ski the Lone Peak tram on an almost daily basis, generously sharing their expertise with passing strangers. So it came to pass that I followed them down the long knee-tremblingly steep pitches known as the Dictator Chutes. No doubt Marx, Lenin and Castro would be horrified to hear their names taken in vain in such elitist circumstances, but for the wannabe ski adventurer, totalitarianism has never had it so good.

The Facts

Getting there

Ski Independence (0870 555 0555; www.ski-independence.co.uk) offers seven nights in The Wort hotel in Jackson Hole from £769 per person, based on two sharing, including return flights, transfers and b&b accommodation.

Ski Club of Great Britain (0845 458 0784; www.skiclub.co.uk) offers 11 nights at Jackson Hole from £1,295 per person, based on two sharing, from 23 February to 5 March, including return flights, transfers and a four day Steep and Deep course for advanced and expert skiers.