Beaver Creek or Park City?

Neither place is for swimmers, and the only difference is the kind of cool water on offer. Beaver Creek has a small sandy patch at Nottingham Lake in Avon, fine for children on a hot afternoon. Park City's Jordanelle Reservoir is larger, with paddleboarding and picnic lawns. In both places, most visitors really swim in the hotel pool or hot tub.

The two eat at much the same level. Both serve polished mountain cooking built on elk, trout and game, and in both après-ski is a ritual. The difference is the setting. Beaver Creek's memorable dinners are up on the mountain, in lodges you reach by chairlift or snowcat sleigh. Park City's line a historic Main Street of old wooden storefronts.

Cheaper food differs too. Beaver Creek sends you down to the taquerias, diners and brewpubs of Avon and Edwards, while Park City relies on the chains at Kimball Junction. Vail adds some choice for one, and Salt Lake City gives the other a proper city's range.

Park City has a past to show, and Beaver Creek does not. The wooden storefronts on Main Street and the mine headframes on the slopes give the town a real silver-mining story. The Park City Museum, with jail cells in its basement, tells it well, and the Olympic Park adds the 2002 Winter Games.

Beaver Creek was built as a ski resort around 1980. It offers a tidy stone-and-timber village with outdoor art that takes about an hour to see. For history you have to drive to Leadville and the other old mining towns.

Park City is livelier, though neither is a party town. Main Street has a short run of saloons and cocktail bars, a few with DJs or bands, and they can get rowdy on winter weekends before closing well short of the small hours.

Beaver Creek was designed to be calm: drinks by the plaza fire pits as the lifts close, a few hotel lounges, and then bed. For a late night, guests drive to Vail from Beaver Creek or to Salt Lake City from Park City.

Both are first-rate mountain bases, so the choice comes down to the kind of mountain. Beaver Creek is known for uncrowded slopes rising to about 3,500m, linked to Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead, with Vail close by. Park City has two big ski areas rising straight from town and Utah's dry, light powder, and Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude are within an hour.

In summer, Park City suits mountain bikers, with singletrack starting from the streets. Beaver Creek's draw is wilder country in the Holy Cross Wilderness and the Gore Range, plus whitewater rafting and Glenwood Canyon.

The number of outings is about equal, but their character is not. From Beaver Creek, every trip goes to another mountain town: Vail, Leadville, Breckenridge or Glenwood Springs. Each is pleasant and quite similar to the others.

Park City has a real city forty minutes away. Salt Lake City offers Temple Square, the State Capitol and good museums. Closer in, the Heber Valley steam railway and Swiss-style Midway are something different, though beyond those the outings are mostly scenery.

Both are well-run family ski resorts with gentle learning areas, and in both the altitude needs watching on the first day. Park City has a little more to fill the time: the Olympic Park's alpine coaster and ziplines, freestyle skiers flipping into a splash pool, and a zoo and aquarium within an hour in Salt Lake City for a bad-weather day.

Beaver Creek has its own charms: a car-free plaza where older children can roam, an ice rink, the covered escalators and warm cookies when the lifts close. But it has no city nearby to fall back on when the weather turns.

Park City is easier without a car. Free buses link Old Town, both ski bases and Kimball Junction, Main Street is walkable if steep, and the airport is about forty minutes away by shuttle.

Beaver Creek is effortless within its own village, with escalators, ski-in ski-out lodging and free shuttles. It is further from everything else, though. Denver is around two hours away over passes that storms can close, and day trips really need a car.

Park City has more range. Main Street mixes Western wear and cowboy boots with outdoor gear and ski fashion, and Kimball Junction adds an outlet centre and chain stores at the edge of town.

Beaver Creek's plaza is a small, high-priced cluster of technical outerwear, jewellery and galleries selling bronze sculpture, good for an hour's browsing on a rest day. For anything everyday, you go down the valley.

Neither is a budget trip, but Beaver Creek is the more relentlessly expensive. Slopeside lodging is mostly luxury hotels and large condos, and staying in Avon or Edwards saves only a little.

Park City is costly too, especially over Christmas and New Year. Its free buses help, though, and you can stay in Salt Lake City or the Heber Valley and drive up, which leaves more room to save. Summer is the cheaper season in both.

Beaver Creek has the stronger programme, largely thanks to the valley's summer. Bravo! Vail brings leading American orchestras to the open-air amphitheatre twenty minutes away, alongside the Vail Dance Festival and a jazz series. The village's own Vilar Performing Arts Center keeps touring shows going in winter too.

Park City's Egyptian Theatre, a 1920s playhouse on Main Street, is a pleasant setting for comedy and cabaret, and the Utah Symphony plays on the lawns at Deer Valley in summer. Outside summer both programmes thin out, though Salt Lake City puts opera and ballet within reach of Park City.

Both offer the same kind of rest: big resort spas, massages for sore legs and outdoor hot tubs in the snow. Neither has a bathing tradition of its own, and Beaver Creek's quiet, car-free evenings make it feel the calmer of the two.

The real difference is the natural warm water nearby. From Beaver Creek, it is the huge outdoor hot springs pool at Glenwood Springs, about an hour west, which has drawn bathers since the 1880s. From Park City, it is the Homestead Crater in Midway, a spring inside a limestone dome where you can swim or snorkel.