Alta, Utah or Boulder?

Neither place is anywhere near a coast, so a beach vacation is out of the question in both.

Boulder does have some summer water. There is a small sandy swim area at the Boulder Reservoir, and floating down Boulder Creek on an inner tube is a local tradition. At Alta, swimming means a lodge pool or a hot tub. The Great Salt Lake below is not a place anyone goes to swim.

Boulder is the place to eat well. Its cooking is health-minded and seasonal, built on Front Range produce, with strong vegetarian choice, serious bakeries and coffee roasters, taprooms across the east side and a lunch in the hand-carved Dushanbe Teahouse. Its range is narrow, but there is plenty to explore.

Alta has no restaurant street at all. Most guests take half board in the lodge dining rooms and lunch in slopeside cafeterias. For variety they drive down the canyon, if the road and the weather allow.

Neither is a place to come for museums, but Boulder at least gives you an enjoyable day. You can walk the 1898 Chautauqua cottages beneath the Flatirons, look at the sandstone and red-tile university campus and visit I.M. Pei's atmospheric research laboratory on the mesa, which has free exhibits.

Alta's history as a silver-mining camp turned early Western ski area survives only as mine traces on the slopes. For culture, its visitors go down to Temple Square and the museums of Salt Lake City.

Boulder has a proper if early-ending night out. There are brewery taprooms and cocktail bars around Pearl Street, and loud student bars on University Hill during term, with Denver close enough for anything bigger.

Alta has a drink in the lodge bar and then bed, and its regulars like it that way. The livelier après-ski is at the neighbouring resort.

Both are outstanding mountain bases, and the difference is in the kind of outdoors. Alta is about snow: some 12m of powder in a big winter, steep in-bounds skiing, avalanche-country touring, and in summer the wildflowers of Albion Basin, the walk to Cecret Lake, and moose on the trails.

Boulder spreads its outdoors across the whole year. More than 200km of open-space trails start at the edge of town, Eldorado Canyon is a world-class climbing wall, cyclists train on the canyon roads, and the lakes and tundra of Rocky Mountain National Park are about an hour away.

Boulder has more to choose from. Denver is easy by express bus, and with a car you can reach Golden, the brewing town of Fort Collins, Estes Park and the Victorian mining streets of Georgetown and Idaho Springs.

From Alta, the outings are Salt Lake City and Park City's old silver-mining Main Street, with Ogden further north. After that the options run out, and in winter every trip depends on a canyon road that closes after storms.

Boulder works for children whether or not they ski. Days fill easily with the creek path, tubing, the reservoir beach and gentle trails, and there are the university planetarium and natural history museum for wet afternoons. The bigger attractions, like the zoo and aquarium, are a short trip away in Denver.

Alta suits families who ski: it has a ski school, easy runs near the base and rooms right by the lifts. For anyone else there is little to do, and the 2,600m altitude can wear out small children.

Boulder's centre is easy without a car. Downtown, the university and Chautauqua are all within walking distance, and an excellent network of off-street bike paths runs along the creeks, with an express bus to Denver. For trailheads further out and the national park, you need a car.

In Alta, you ski out of the lodge door and a shuttle links the base areas. Everything depends on the single road through Little Cottonwood Canyon, which jams on powder mornings, closes for avalanche control and often needs chains.

Up the canyon there is little to buy beyond what a ski day needs. Alta's few shops rent and tune skis and sell outdoor gear and branded souvenirs, with no boutiques, markets or crafts, so its visitors drive to Park City or Salt Lake City to shop.

On the brick-paved Pearl Street Mall, Boulder offers a modest but genuine shopping street, with independent bookshops, galleries, toy shops and boutiques set among flower beds. The real strength is outdoor gear: the climbing, running and cycling shops are unusually good for a town of this size, though anyone after department stores or luxury labels still goes to Denver.

Both are expensive, but Boulder is the gentler on a budget. Its trails and open space cost almost nothing, buses are reasonably priced, and staying in Denver brings lodging costs down further.

Alta has only a few lodges, and they charge high season rates, usually with dinner included. Lift tickets are moderate, but to save money you have to sleep down in the Salt Lake valley and come up the canyon each day.

Not one theatre, concert hall or music venue stands in Alta, so the only way to see a concert, a play or the symphony is to drive down to Salt Lake City.

Live music is one of the real pleasures of a Boulder stay. Touring rock, bluegrass and roots acts play the small rooms downtown and on the Hill most nights. In summer the Colorado Music Festival fills the wooden 1898 Chautauqua Auditorium and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival puts on plays outdoors on campus. Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the natural sandstone venue south of town, is under an hour away.

Boulder makes wellness part of daily life. Yoga and meditation studios are everywhere, a contemplative Buddhist-inspired university gives the town roots in that tradition, and day spas and acupuncture are easy to find. For a soak, there is the spring-fed pool at Eldorado Springs and the hot springs at Idaho Springs.

Alta's version is a hot tub steaming in the snow and a massage after a hard ski day. The spas are small, but the deep quiet of a snowed-in village is restful in its own way.