The church bells of St Anton ring in merry glee during march, heralding the return of the warmer spring weather and the festival of the firn snow.

It only takes two ingredients to create Firn or Spring snow. Warm sun by day and freezing temperatures at night . During the morning the top layer of the frozen snow pack thaws and is transformed from concrete like ice to the magical substance of Firn snow.

Firn is only ever found off-piste and rarely lasts past lunch time but is re-born overnight. Skiing on this transformed surface then becomes the most effortless task as technique is forgotten and sliding downhill becomes an art form .On the liquefied top sheet you cannot fail to feel the most accomplished skier, now skis bite and turn with ease as you flow with poise and elegance.If you have ever had trouble skiing off-piste and fallen countless of times in powder then start your backcountry-career on spring snow.

Technique books can be thrown out of the window, the real skillis in the timing. Too early a start and you'll skid forever on the still-frozen boilerplate, too late and the snow will have morphed into the soggiest ankle-deep paper-mache ready to avalanche the moment an untimely skier pulls the trigger.Load the dice in your favour and take out an instructor or guide from the St Anton ski school . They are firn mathematicians who carefully evaluate the formula of variable factors that include the time of day, the heat of the sun and direction of the slope. Their knowledge is complete and can be trusted to take you finest runs on which to enjoy the Arlberg's famous firn in safety. Our Instructor was Robert, a qualified mountain guide and veteran of 12 years in the ski school . There was little time for formal introductions to the rest of the group .

"The Firn will not wait for us", Robert shouted to the dawdlers as he hustled us past the queues for the Galzig cable car and instead headed up the Mattun Chairlift to Kapall. Our warm up run was the Schongraben ( meaning nice grave) a low-altitude south -facing valley that was soft enough to be skied at 9.30 in the morning. In the depths of winter this would be the perfect hideaway to track powder during a storm but this morning the transformed snow was beckoning and the group devoured the wide slope as a starving man given a plate of hor d'oeuvres. Ski the main guts of the Schrongraben gully and if it avalanches it's certain death but we were heading into the safety of the trees. Soon our wide turns were strangled to short-radius-arcs as we dropped into the timberline seeking sun-softened-snow and avoiding the icy-shadows . Exiting into a deserted flat valley, the legs were now nicely warmed up. There was no time for relaxation and sitting in the sun. Robert hounded us back to Galzig warning that the snow would soon become 'mush'. Two cable cars left us standing below the peak of the imposing Valluga . Beneath the slopes of the Schindlkar were covered in so many bumps it appeared as though someone had coated the mountain in a casing of bubble wrap . The top cable car station opening up vast powder tracks down to Zurs but our second mission for today was to take us to the king of firn snow mountains - the Mattun Joch. An endless traverse terminated at the summit of the Mattun-Kapall ski route, graded black it was laughably easy in the mutated surface.

Individual preferences of skiing were soon demonstrated. My own bias was to leave the tips in the fall line for as long as possible, building G-forces until safety decreed they should be tilted, turned and speed harnessed. This was a true playground for grown-ups with various knolls and shelf's being the swings and slides. Even with all this user-friendly snow beneath our feet we still entertained the urge to put some daylight between our bases and the white stuff. Re-grouping at the bottom cheesy grins were prominent on all faces with more teeth present then an Osmond family re-union concert.

The Valluga sector was by now toasted in the hot sun so we skittled down to Alpe Rauz and into Stuben. This limb of the Arlberg is home to some of the world’s greatest powder adventures. The North side down to Langen was still wearing its winter coat but the back of the Albona Grat was warming up nicely. Two chair lifts saw us looking at an uphill traverse around the ridge of the Peischl Kopf before we could head downhill. The wide top segment hosting upto 30 perfect turns before cutting right to the top of a gully named Rastus Ferwall. "Here we must go one at a time", Robert reminding us that the ceaseless danger of avalanche is never more prominent than in spring. Grouped together the chute was masked by its own snow-wall until moments before you dropped into it. Robert pushed off and seemed to be instantly swallowed into the stomach of the mountain. Then one-by-one like sheep, or could it have been Lemmings, we faithfully followed him towards the gaping mouth of the couloir. The terrible magnificence of the Ferwall only evident seconds before you find yourself transferring from a flat ledge into what looked like a elevator shaft. Dropping onto the steep pitch my K2's held, anchoring resolutely, to make a solid platform. Looking down the end of the run seemed to disappear into the distance like water in a deep Well. Swallowing hard I stabbed a pole in as far down as my arm would stretch and began trading turns for height, each submission to gravity devouring six or seven feet of elevation in this classic gun barrel with smooth-rounded walls and a cramped corridor that forced tight arcs with no room for errors. The Ferwall was milking energy like Concorde drinking kerosene, when my legs and chest yelled for mercy I coasted up the walls pulling off long aeroplane turns. The end of the gully loomed, forcing another series of short-swings, this time accompanied by frantic-edge-checks in a desperate attempt to tame velocity. My thighs felt like two concrete blocks and lungs were near to bursting, both howling painfully in protest but self-preservation screamed the loudest. Finally the world flattened out to signal the start of a long pole back. A scenic route following the course of the stream through a valley lost in the wilderness until civilisation loomed in the form of a taxi that had been organised a to take us to the Rendle.

No time for lunch just a quick drink to re-hydrate at Rendle beach. Many skiers had stripped down to avoid that stops-at-the-neck tan and settled in for the day. If it wasn't for the snow you could well indeed be on a beach with the multitude of deck chairs and bodies worshipping the fireball in the sky.The top of the Riffel chairlift saw us looking at a traverse and hike above a ridge that panned away from the main ski area. After a short climb we were hurried around more rock-ridges traversing and climbing until my hipand thighs yearned to go down instead of across and up. Eventually we were greeted with a delicious-looking smooth pitch that was the payback for all the laboured breathing. This was as far from the piste that we could possibly get without the aid of touring equipment. I decided that this descent was be savoured and then tucked away tidily in a memory bank. Choosing my line where the snow looked undisturbed I hopped the ski tips out of the traverse, pointed them down and let 'em run. Abruptly someone hit the pause button and the real-world ground to a halt. There was no mortgage, no credit card repayments, no career worries, just me, a mountain and the delicious firn snow. A flight of freedom on wings of steel and fibreglass that at each turn was sending a shockwave of pleasure -pulses racing around each and every nerve ending. This was living, truly never feeling so alive as by simply moving down a hill with only the hissing sound of skis cutting through the sweet-sugar-snow. It was over all too soon and we began poling back to the lifts.The day was over for spring-snow and all we could do now was to wait for the freezing night time temperatures to renew the canvas so we could weave our brush-strokes once more. The group still had some energy reserves left untapped so Robert insisted on taking us up to the Schlindkar to work out our final stashes of strength by treating us to a steep-bump run and some high-speed-body-dodging on piste.Afterwards it was all I could do to collapse into the Moosebarn that was already groaning under the weight of adrenaline junkies who had sated their thrill dependency from the tops of the Alberg ski lifts. St Anton buzzes like no other ski resort with extraordinary apres-ski that is unsurpassed by any other. But I knew it would be an early night. Sheer exhaustion accompanied by the fact that it would be an unforgivable crime to oversleep and possibly miss one precious minute of tomorrow's spring snow offering.