Alta, Utah or Laguna Beach?

Alta has no beach and no swimming beyond a lodge pool or hot tub, and the Great Salt Lake is not a lake for bathing. Laguna Beach is built around its shoreline, a string of coves and small beaches running from Crescent Bay and Heisler Park in the north to Thousand Steps and Aliso in the south.

The Pacific there is clear enough for snorkelling over the reefs, but it is cool for much of the year and some coves are reached only by long stairways. With children, choose the lifeguarded beaches, because rip currents vary from cove to cove.

Neither is a food destination, but the gap is real. In Alta you eat where you sleep, usually on half board in the lodge dining room with lunch in a slopeside cafeteria, and variety means driving down to Salt Lake City.

Laguna Beach has ocean-view dining on the cliffs, fish tacos and poke, breakfast cafés for surfers and a few serious seafood kitchens pouring California wine. It offers choice rather than depth, and the wider Orange County scene inland adds Vietnamese, Mexican and Korean cooking.

Alta has no museums or historic buildings. Its past as a silver-mining camp that became one of the West's early ski areas survives only in old mine traces on the slopes. Laguna Beach has a modest but real heritage as a plein air art colony, seen in the Laguna Art Museum, the galleries on Coast Highway and Forest Avenue and the old craftsman cottages. A morning covers it all, and Mission San Juan Capistrano is close by if you want more.

Both towns go to bed early. Alta offers an après-ski drink in a lodge bar and nothing after it, which is exactly how its regulars like it. Laguna Beach has a little more: old beach and dive bars, wine bars and hotel terraces over the ocean that fill up on summer weekends. For clubs you still have to drive to Newport Beach, Costa Mesa or Los Angeles.

Both are outdoor places, but Alta is the more remarkable. At around 2,600m in the Wasatch, it is built around deep powder, steep skiing and serious backcountry touring. In summer there are the wildflower meadows of Albion Basin, the walk to Cecret Lake and climbs to the surrounding peaks, with moose and mountain goats on the trails.

Laguna Beach offers a wider mix on a gentler scale. There are chaparral ridges in Laguna Coast Wilderness Park and Aliso and Wood Canyons, and a protected coast for tide pooling, kayaking and shore diving, with grey whales passing offshore in winter. It has the sea that Alta lacks, but nothing to match Alta's mountains.

From Alta the choices are Salt Lake City, the mining-era Main Street of Park City and Ogden. Every one of them depends on a canyon road that closes for avalanche control after storms.

Laguna Beach has far more within a drive. Mission San Juan Capistrano is close, the coast runs from Huntington Beach to Dana Point, and ferries cross to Catalina. Temecula's vineyards are about an hour inland, and San Diego or Los Angeles make a long day out.

Alta works for families who ski, with a ski school, gentle beginner slopes and lodges right at the lifts. Children who do not ski will find little to do, the altitude can tire them, and storm days may keep everyone indoors.

Laguna Beach suits a wider range of ages. It has lifeguarded beaches, tide pools, the Main Beach playground, and Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm about forty minutes away. The practical catches are the steep stairways down to many beaches and the scarce parking in summer.

Alta's lodges stand at the foot of the lifts, many with ski-in, ski-out access, and a winter shuttle links the village. The hard part is getting up there. Everything depends on the single road up Little Cottonwood Canyon, which jams on powder mornings, closes for avalanche control after storms and often requires chains. Outside the ski season public transport largely stops and you need a car.

In Laguna Beach the village around Main Beach and Forest Avenue is easy on foot, and a free trolley runs along Coast Highway between the northern and southern coves. Beyond that it is freeway country, with no rail, slow and infrequent buses and parking that fills early on summer weekends. You need a car in every season here, while in Alta it matters most outside winter.

Alta's shops rent and tune skis and sell outdoor gear, and that is all. Laguna Beach is good for browsing. Galleries along Coast Highway and North Laguna sell plein air painting and glass, and Forest Avenue has beachwear and jewellery shops. In summer the art festivals have stalls run by the makers themselves, and the luxury malls of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa are half an hour away.

Both are expensive, for different reasons. Alta has few beds, almost all in ski lodges where dinner is often included, though its lift tickets are moderate for a major American resort. Laguna Beach charges for its coast through clifftop resorts, restaurants with a view and paid parking, but its beaches, trails and trolley are free.

The way to save is the same in both: stay further away and come in for the day. For Alta that means the Salt Lake valley and the ski bus, and for Laguna it means staying inland or up the coast.

Alta has no stage of any kind. Evenings are spent in the lodges, and a concert means going to Salt Lake City. Laguna Beach has two real institutions: the Pageant of the Masters, where live performers recreate famous artworks each summer evening in a Laguna Canyon amphitheatre, and the Laguna Playhouse, one of the oldest running theatres on the West Coast. For opera and symphony, Costa Mesa is a half-hour drive away.

Neither has a bathing tradition or thermal water. In Alta, rest is the deep tiredness after a ski day: outdoor hot tubs in the snow, saunas, small lodge spas and very quiet evenings. Laguna Beach has more you can book, with full ocean-view spas at the bluff-top resorts, yoga studios and day spas, and its clifftop walks and long sunsets make the slow pace easy to enjoy.