On the vast, snow-covered moraine of Argentiere's Grands Montets, the main attraction for hardcore skiers and boarders in Chamonix, there was no stopping him. Bandar Bin Khaled Al-Faisal Bin Abdulazziz, a towering figure of well over 6ft, tore about leaving me in his slipstream.

I should have known better than to assume that just because he is a Saudi prince, Bandar would be a novice on skis.

But then he and his father, Prince Khaled, King Fahd's nephew and the governor of Saudi Arabia's mountainous Aseer province, have been coming to Chamonix for years. They base themselves in Megeve, where they have a home, and enjoy the camaraderie of their own ski guru, Roland Stieger.

The effervescent Stieger, a high-mountain guide who spent years teaching French military personnel how to ski, was also a key member of the helicopter mountain rescue team in Chamonix.

There are only 14 marked pistes in Argentiere, which is, of course, renowned for its many unmarked runs. Yet even if you stay on-piste here, the terrain is on such a vast scale that you would have your work cut out to ski all 14 in a single day.

From the very top of the Grands Montets, with its chilling views of the Aiguille Verte and Les Drus, there are only two marked routes, both black and bump-strewn, down a landscape which dwarfs even the most powerful skiers and snowboarders: the thigh-burning Point de Vue, with its outlook across the fearsome Glacier d'Argentie re, and Pylones, which comes full-bloodedly down the middle of the mountain.

If you are extremely careful, some guides will even take you a little way into the glacier to enable you to make one or two turns among the seracs (blocks of ice formed by the moving glacier). But trying this, or the thrilling Pas de Chevre (Goat's Hop), without a guide is foolhardy.

For skiers and boarders in search of slightly gentler adventures, the place to get to is the mid-mountain section around Plan Joran and Lognan, where the main selection of lifts and runs is concentrated.

The cable car to Croix de Lognan is usually the quickest way up, but at peak times it can be easier to take the quad chair to Plan Joran. From these two locations, the meat of the mid-mountain runs can be accessed, including a ride to the top of the Bochard Gondola with its exciting Chamois descent.

Skiing almost anywhere on the Grands Montets can be prove overwhelming, due as much to the heroic landscape as to the difficulty of the slopes.

The wide open spaces are, in a way, the antithesis of the town of Chamonix itself, which is inclined to be claustrophobic but beguiling.

There seems to be a constant supply of new restaurants to discover along its narrow streets. Quite a find was the Jekyll, an Irish pub in the Route des Pelerins, where the Norwegian chef, Elizabeth Harbitz, produces what is really high-class bar food, but delicious.

Chamonix seems to attract Scandinavians. Anna Gilbert, joint owner of the quaint old Hotel Eden with Simon Norris, is Swedish, as is the chef, Frederik Darenius.

Judging by his name, the other partner, Sven Llewellyn, could have been a Welsh Swede, but turned out to be from Yorkshire. I much enjoyed my fillet of pikeperch, with a spring roll and soy sauce, and I was obviously not the only guest to appreciate the food.

Someone had written in the visitors' book: "Long and thin we staggered in, short and stout we waddled out."

Tira, the hotel's resident Labrador-Husky- Bernese mountain dog, which allegedly understands Swedish, English and French, is certainly never short of a snack.