This week’s dream: ski touring in Iceland

On a traditional ski holiday, you’d expect to be gazing daily on an Alpine backdrop of “pointed peaks and neatly farmed valleys”, says James Pickford in the FT. But flying into Akureyri for a six-day ski tour of Iceland’s Troll Peninsula, all you can see are “empty, mesa-like plateaus” and the “slate grey of the Greenland Sea”. For seasoned skiers, there’s a “rawness and remoteness” to this place that the Alps can’t match. There are no crowds, no queues, no ski lifts – only the empty, otherworldly topography that has made Iceland such a magnet.

Under “leaden” skies, you set off with your group and guide for the first of a series of unmanned huts that will be your base. With skins affixed to your skis, you can easily ascend the series of gently undulating hills, falling quickly into a natural rhythm. The first hut has an oil heater and – “not always a given” – a toilet, but no running water: snow must be melted in a pot on the stove. It’s all “surprisingly cosy”, even when the wind rattles the walls. By day, the snow is a “sugary layer” of the kind that’s coveted at the big resorts, allowing for “glorious, sweeping turns” and “graceful” manoeuvres on untouched powder. It’s a funny feeling to be skiing “so close to the sea”, with fishing boats bobbing at the foot of the mountain.

If you’re lucky enough, as well as finding the best snow you may get a second goal: the aurora borealis. On such nights, the heavens ripple “with bright skeins of green and purple” in a scene of unadulterated magic. You don’t get that in the Alps, either. If you’re still not sold, you may be by the end of the tour, when you get to have a dunk in Akureyri’s municipal baths – a name that “hardly does justice to this magnificent complex of geothermally heated pools”. For weary skiers, it’s a welcome finale, soothing away every ache and pain before you even get back on the plane. Bergmenn Mountain Guides (bergmenn.com) runs tours from about £1,300pp, starting in February.