Alaska is the place to earn your turns: telemark. It's made very significant strides in the last 25 years. Bindings that are strong as hell, can be switched to 0 resistance for the uphill or just flats, great boots. Great used gear can be bought for less than the cost of lift tickets, which you then don't need.

What really drives the sport is all the great skiers out west and all the resorts having too much traffic so all the fresh pow gets tracked out. No problems with that in the backcountry.