Alta, Utah or Carmel-by-the-Sea?

Alta is a mountain village with no beach at all. The Great Salt Lake below is too shallow and salty for anyone to swim in, so bathing means a lodge pool or hot tub.

Carmel at least has a real shore. Carmel Beach is a long curve of white sand under cypress trees, good for sunset picnics and morning walks with views over to Pebble Beach. The cold water, strong surf and steep drop-offs at Monastery Beach leave swimming to wetsuited surfers, though, and most visitors use a hotel pool.

In Alta, meals are mostly eaten in the lodge: half board at long communal tables, and cafeteria lunches between runs. It's fuel for skiers, Utah's liquor rules shape how drinks are served, and variety means driving down to Salt Lake City.

Carmel is a far better place to eat. Its cottage bistros serve French and Italian cooking built on Dungeness crab, sand dabs and Castroville artichokes, the tasting rooms pour Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir, and breakfast comes from bakeries. The food is refined and dinner tends to be early, with little that is cheap or from beyond Europe and California.

Alta's history is real. It began as a silver-mining camp and became one of the oldest ski areas in the American West. Little of that past is left to visit, though. A few traces of the old mines survive on the slopes, but there's no museum or historic building to tour, so anyone who wants to see sights drives down to Salt Lake City.

Carmel has a good deal more to see. Mission San Carlos Borromeo, founded in 1771 and the burial place of Junípero Serra, is one of the finest in California's mission chain, with a stone basilica and gardens. The village gets its character from Robinson Jeffers' hand-built granite Tor House and the curved rooflines of the 1920s storybook cottages. There's no major museum, however, and a morning or two covers it.

Both places are asleep early, but in different ways. In Alta the evening is an après-ski beer in ski boots at the lodge bar before an early night for the first lifts, and the neighbouring resort has a livelier scene. In Carmel it's a glass of Pinot in a wine bar, a long candlelit dinner and maybe a nightcap in a hotel lounge, with the streets quiet by ten. Neither has clubs. A night out means Salt Lake City from Alta and the modest bars of Monterey from Carmel.

Both are superb places to be outdoors, but they couldn't be more different. Alta is high mountains: 2,600m up at the head of Little Cottonwood Canyon, with more than 12m of powder in a big winter, steep skiing and real avalanche terrain for backcountry tourers. In summer there are Albion Basin's wildflowers, the walk to Cecret Lake, and moose and mountain goats on the trails.

Carmel is all coast. Point Lobos has granite headlands, sea otters and seals, with grey whales passing offshore. Big Sur's bluffs and redwood canyons start just south of town, and Monterey Bay is good for kayaking and kelp-forest diving. Alta has no water to paddle on, and Carmel has no snow or high peaks.

Carmel has the better spread of outings, most of them close by. Within a short drive are Monterey's Cannery Row and old adobe buildings, Victorian Pacific Grove and the wine lanes of Carmel Valley. Further out are Steinbeck country in Salinas, the mission at San Juan Bautista and Santa Cruz's boardwalk.

Alta has two good outings, Salt Lake City with Temple Square and the State Capitol, and Park City's old mining Main Street, and after that the list runs out. Every one of them depends on the canyon road, which closes after heavy storms, and the famous national parks are many hours south.

Carmel suits more families. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, with its otters and kelp forest tank, can fill a day, and there are tide pools, sandcastles on Carmel Beach and a well-known playground in Monterey. The cold, rough sea and grown-up restaurants make it best for school-age children who like wildlife.

Alta only makes sense for children if the whole family skis. Then the ski school, beginner slopes near the base and lodges beside the lifts are handy, but the altitude, the cold and days kept indoors during avalanche control can be hard on young ones.

Everything in Alta depends on the single road up Little Cottonwood Canyon from Salt Lake City, about 50km away. It backs up on powder mornings, closes for avalanche control after storms and often requires chains or winter tyres. Up in the village things are easy: the lodges sit at the lifts, many of them ski-in, ski-out, and a shuttle runs in winter. Outside the ski season, though, you need a car for anything beyond the village.

In Carmel the problem is distance, not weather. The square-mile grid is easy on foot apart from the steep hill down to the beach, and the residential lanes away from the centre are unlit and have few pavements. Point Lobos, Big Sur, the wineries and the aquarium all mean driving, buses are infrequent, and parking in the centre is tight in summer and at weekends.

In Alta, shopping means ski rental, tuning and a rack of logo fleeces, so serious shoppers go to Park City or Salt Lake City.

Carmel is good for an afternoon of browsing. There are an unusual number of galleries around Ocean Avenue and Dolores Street, showing plein-air landscapes and photography, and courtyard boutiques selling cashmere, jewellery and homeware. It's polished and expensive but small, with no department store or real market.

Neither place is cheap, and there is little to choose between them on cost. What differs is where the money goes. In Alta you pay because there is no alternative: you sleep in one of the few lodges by the lifts, at a high winter rate that usually includes dinner, and the canyon has nowhere cheaper to eat or stay. By the standards of big American resorts, the lift pass is the one cost that feels reasonable.

Carmel charges luxury prices for nearly everything, from the cottage inns to the wine tastings and the spa, but its best days cost nothing, because the beach, the village lanes and most of the coastal walks are free. Both places can be done for less in the same way. Sleep further down, in the Salt Lake valley below Alta or in Monterey and Seaside near Carmel, and come in each day.

Carmel has a real summer arts season for such a small place. The Carmel Bach Festival has played Baroque concerts at the Sunset Center since 1935, and the Forest Theater stages plays under the pines. The Monterey Jazz Festival is nearby each September. Out of season there's not much more than community theatre and a guitarist in a wine bar.

Alta has no stage of any kind. Apart from occasional summer events at the next resort, anyone wanting the symphony or a play goes to Salt Lake City.

Carmel is the more comfortable place to unwind. The resorts of Pebble Beach and Carmel Valley have proper spas with pools and treatments, village inns offer massages in your room, and misty mornings, fireside rooms and coastal walks make it a good slow weekend for couples.

In Alta, relaxing is what you do after a hard day's skiing: an outdoor hot tub in the snow, a sauna and a massage in a small lodge spa. Its strength is the deep quiet of a tiny village muffled by snowfall, not its facilities. Neither place has thermal springs or a bathing tradition.