Beaver Creek or Deer Valley?

Neither is a place to swim. Both are high in the Rockies and a long way from any sea, so in practice you will swim in a heated hotel pool.

What lake swimming there is differs in kind. Beaver Creek has only the small sandy patch at Nottingham Lake in Avon, which is fed by chilly snowmelt. Deer Valley has Jordanelle Reservoir a short drive below, a state park with a proper sandy shore and water that warms up nicely by July and August.

The two eat at much the same level: refined mountain cooking with no local cuisine behind it. The difference is where the choice lies. In Beaver Creek, the memorable meals are on the mountain, with dinners reached by chairlift or snowcat sleigh. Cheap everyday food means taquerias and diners down in Avon and Edwards, or a drive to Vail.

Deer Valley works the other way round. The lodges cook to the same polished standard, and a bowl of turkey chili at the base is the skiers' classic lunch, but the real choice is in town. Park City's old streets are a few minutes away by free bus, so a different dinner each night needs neither a sleigh ride nor a trip down the valley. Below the upscale level there is little in either place, and in Park City local breweries and distilleries fill the gap rather than taquerias.

Beaver Creek was built from scratch as a ski resort around 1980. Its stone-and-timber plaza with outdoor art is pleasant, but you can see it in about an hour. The nearest mining heritage is a drive away in Leadville or Breckenridge.

Deer Valley has more to show because Park City is next door. Its restored Main Street dates from the town's nineteenth-century silver boom, with wooden storefronts and old mine headframes on the slopes, and the Park City Museum tells that story in the old city hall. The ski-jump towers of the Utah Olympic Park recall the 2002 Winter Games. All of this fills an afternoon rather than a whole trip, but it is real history.

Deer Valley offers the more sociable evening, again thanks to Park City. In ski season, and especially at weekends, the saloons and cocktail bars on Main Street fill up. It is still a small-town scene that closes early, with Utah's liquor rules in the background.

Beaver Creek was designed to wind down. Evenings are a cocktail by a plaza fire pit as the lifts close and a hotel lounge after dinner. Anyone looking for more has to drive to Vail.

Both are first-rate mountain bases, so the choice comes down to the kind of skiing you want. Beaver Creek offers famously uncrowded slopes rising to about 3,500m, linked to Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead with Vail close by, in dry, sunny winters. Deer Valley is skiers only and immaculately groomed, with the vast Park City Mountain next door and the deep Utah powder of Alta and Snowbird about an hour over the ridge.

Summers differ too. Beaver Creek leads into the Holy Cross Wilderness and the Gore Range, with rafting on the Colorado and Glenwood Canyon an hour west. Deer Valley turns its runs into a linked network of bike trails, with the high lakes of the Uintas beyond. Beaver Creek's village sits higher, so expect to feel the altitude more.

The day trips are about equal in number, but different in character. From Beaver Creek, the outings are other mountain towns: Vail's Tyrolean-style village, Victorian Leadville, gold-rush Breckenridge and the spa town of Glenwood Springs. They are pleasant, but rather similar to one another.

Deer Valley's best outing is an actual city. Salt Lake City, about forty minutes away, has Temple Square, the State Capitol and proper museums. Closer in are smaller trips to Midway, the Heber Valley steam railway and the arts village at Sundance.

Both work well for families who ski, each in its own way. Beaver Creek wins on village life: a car-free plaza, an outdoor ice rink, escalators up from the car parks and warm cookies at the end of the ski day. Its weak spot is a bad-weather day, with no zoo or museum anywhere near.

Deer Valley's beginner runs have no snowboarders on them, and the Olympic Park adds tubing, an alpine coaster and ziplines. Salt Lake City's zoo, planetarium and children's museum are within reach for a day off the slopes, though getting there means driving.

Both are easy once you have arrived. Beaver Creek's compact pedestrian village, linked by outdoor escalators and free shuttles, is the easier place to manage on foot. Deer Valley's lodges are spread across steep hillsides, so you rely on Park City's free buses to reach Main Street and the other base areas.

Getting there is easier for Deer Valley, whose main airport is about forty minutes away. Beaver Creek has the small Eagle airport nearby, but from Denver it is about two hours over passes that winter storms can close.

Neither is a shopping destination. Both offer upmarket ski wear, western boots and art galleries in about equal measure. Beaver Creek's shops are a small cluster around the plaza, with bronze sculpture and luxury outerwear that you browse rather than hunt through.

Deer Valley shoppers walk the old mining-town façades of Park City's Main Street, and the outlet centre at Kimball Junction is a real option for bargains. That makes Deer Valley the slightly broader choice for mountain gear.

Both are among the most expensive places to ski in North America, and there is no budget way to do either. Lodging, lift access, lessons and mountain meals all cost a lot in both.

The ways to save are similar. At Beaver Creek you stay down the valley in Avon or Edwards and buy lift passes early. At Deer Valley you stay in the Heber Valley or Salt Lake City and drive in. In both, summer costs noticeably less.

Beaver Creek has the richer programme. The intimate Vilar Performing Arts Center in the village runs a season in both winter and summer. In summer, Bravo! Vail brings leading American orchestras to the open-air amphitheatre twenty minutes away, and the Vail Dance Festival and a jazz series fill other evenings.

Deer Valley's highlight is the Utah Symphony's summer festival at the Snow Park amphitheatre, where people picnic on the grass. In Park City, the restored 1920s Egyptian Theatre stages plays and small concerts. It is pleasant, but there is less of it.

Relaxing is about the same in both: big hotel spas, hot tubs in the snow and quiet evenings. The difference is the soak further afield. From Beaver Creek, it is about an hour to Glenwood Springs, whose huge outdoor mineral pool has drawn bathers since the 1880s.

From Deer Valley, it is half an hour to the Homestead Crater in Midway, a warm spring hidden inside a beehive-shaped limestone dome. It is the stranger and more intimate of the two, while Glenwood Springs is better for a long, lazy day.