Active holidays: Snow Special - It's all uphill from here - just the

From a gulley 200 metres above, a loose skein of ski-tracks wind their way down to a frozen lake, where our tiny group has decided to survey its progress. And right there, on the last skiing day of the week, I finally get it: the uphill slog, the downhill tumbles, the dodgy snow, the boulders, the avalanche threat and, to be frank, the fear... in that half-hour, swooping 1,200m down fields of light spring powder snow, ski touring begins to make sense.

The concept of ski-touring is simple. You make your own way up the mountain and you make your own way down - no lifts, no groomed runs, no vin chauds in the piste-side cafe. Classically, a ski tour continues for a number of days along a predetermined, off-piste route with overnight stops at mountain refuges - the Haute Route, from Chamonix to Zermatt, being the most famous example.

The appeal is obvious: a guided trek away from the teeming slopes of a resort, through spectacular mountainscapes over untracked snow. Just the thing for a fairly fit, average intermediate skier with four weeks of skiing behind him? What better way to find out than by taking an introductory ski-touring course.

For anyone used to the developed resorts of the Alps, the more relaxed skiing in the French Pyrenees is a welcome contrast. Our base, Luz, is half-an-hour's drive south of Lourdes and 1,000m up in the foothills. To describe my accommodation at the one-star Hotel Cimes is to give a flavour of the whole area: low-key, friendly, no frills, with decent food and drink at a good price (my week's bar bill was an un-Alpine FF200). From Luz it is a short drive to three or four impressive ski areas. But, being considerably further south than the Alps, the Pyrenees have more variable snow conditions. Unfortunately, that affected my visit at the start of the March to May ski-touring season. Most European resorts were suffering then, but our area was sweating through an unseasonable warm spell.

Our itinerary had to be tweaked in only one respect: instead of a three- day, two-night mini-tour to round off the week, we took a series of day tours. Otherwise, my fellow novices, Chris, a Yorkshireman, and Steve, an American from Maine, and I worked our way through the schedule as planned: two days training with Simon, a director of Pyrenean Mountain Tours, the small English company running the course, and four days out in the mountains with Richard, our guide. We had much to learn. Simon gave us each a snow shovel, skins (more of which later) and an avalanche transceiver. We were expected to have them about ourselves at all times on the mountain - wearing the transceiver and carrying the rest, along with water and food, in a back-pack.

The focus of day one, as Simon saw it, was on-piste ski-coaching in preparation for heading off-piste; the focus as I saw it was abandoning the fundamentals of skiing. Transferring most of your weight on to the downhill ski while turning, for instance. Forget it, we were told - you'll never cope with the wildly differing snow conditions off-piste unless you carve equally with both skis. What's more, planting your skis at least eight inches apart may not win you any prizes for style, but it affords the extra balance a tricky, untested snowfield demands. And so it turned out. I clicked into my bindings for the first time in three years and had reassembled my technique by day's end (well, there wasn't much to fall apart in the first place). At this point, we were introduced, through a few simple drills, to the avalanche transceiver.

What comes down, we discovered the next day, must go up. Touring boots are slightly shorter than their downhill cousins and more adjustable, though they fit all bindings; mine proved so comfortable both up and downhill that I bought them. The touring bindings free the heel for the ascent, while functioning like normal for the descent. And finally there are the skins (strips of fake animal fur) which the skier attaches to the bottom of each ski. To skin uphill, simply keep your ski in contact with the snow and maintain a pace you find comfortable. The grain of the fur stops the skis from sliding backwards. The only technicality tourers have to master in the ascent is the uphill kick-turns at the end of each pitch. Skinning uphill is still exhausting work - each of our day tours involved climbing around 1,000 metres at 350m per hour, with the odd water stop and a 20-minute lunch-break.

What the ascent allows you is the time to absorb your surroundings. Over the next four days in the ranges around Gavarnie and Bareges/La Mongie (the biggest ski area in the Pyrenees), Richard, Steve, Chris and I made our way around frozen azure lakes, across dams and the debris of recent avalanches, and through evergreen forests (the Pyrenees being fortunate in having a higher tree-line than the Alps). And all in nearly complete isolation - we encountered other small touring groups perhaps three times.

As for the descent, nothing quite stokes the adrenalin like the first push off a steep col. Which was fortunate, as what lay beneath was, more often than not, pretty difficult. The training helped, but the unusual weather had left behind snow that was crusty when it wasn't heavy. Chris and Steve coped well, and were, along with Richard, generous with time and advice; but all of us were having trouble linking more than a few turns, and I spent a lot of time picking myself up after yet another energy-sapping fall. Sometimes I felt I wasn't so much skiing as surviving.