At Homeland, a lift-free ski experience in Lombardy, you have to hike up to ski down. Our writer wonders if this is the future for winter resorts

The first sign we’re heading into the wild, having left the cosy confines of our resort for a ski touring taster, comes when three mountain goats jump in front of the car, eyeball us skittishly, then launch themselves off a vertiginous drop to our left.

My 14-year-old son, in the passenger seat beside me, curses loudly, and I take a deep breath. We drive on, navigating some serious hairpin bends, before arriving in Montespluga, which sits at an altitude of almost 2,000 metres in the Lombardy region of the Italian Alps, about two-and-a-half hours’ drive from Milan.