Beaver Creek or Taos?

Both are high-country towns far from any coast, and swimming is an afterthought in each. Beaver Creek at least has the small sandy patch at Nottingham Lake down in Avon, cold with snowmelt. Taos offers hotel pools and riverside hot springs, which are for soaking rather than swimming.

The food is about as good in both, but very different. Beaver Creek serves polished resort cooking, with elk, lamb and trout, long wine lists and dinners at on-mountain lodges reached by sleigh, and you go down to Avon and Edwards for cheaper meals.

Taos has a real regional cuisine: red and green chile, posole, carne adovada and horno bread from the Pueblo, served in old family-run places along the road to Ranchos. If you want to taste somewhere specific, choose Taos. Choose Beaver Creek for refined dinners in a comfortable setting.

This is where the two differ most. Beaver Creek was built as a ski resort around 1980, and beyond the outdoor art on its plaza it has no history to visit.

Taos has a thousand years of it. The multi-storey adobe houses of Taos Pueblo are still lived in, the buttressed church at Ranchos de Taos drew O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams, and the Harwood, Millicent Rogers and Fechin collections tell the story of the art colony. Plan two or three slow days for it all.

Neither has much going on after dinner. Beaver Creek's evening is après-ski by a fire pit and a quiet hotel lounge, with Vail nearby for a busier bar. Taos is more casual and local: a margarita in an adobe hotel bar, a brewery taproom or a saloon with a band.

Both are excellent mountain bases, and the difference lies in the terrain. Beaver Creek is groomed, uncrowded skiing up to about 3,500m with Vail's huge area next door, and in summer it has forest trails into the Holy Cross Wilderness, fly-fishing and rafting on the Eagle and Colorado.

Taos Ski Valley is steeper and more demanding, and the landscape around the town is wilder and more open: the Rio Grande gorge cutting through sagebrush plateau, Wheeler Peak at 4,013m and whitewater in the Taos Box. Pick Beaver Creek for easy skiing and Taos for big desert skies.

Taos has the richer range of outings. The High Road to Santa Fe passes adobe churches at Las Trampas and the sanctuary at Chimayó, and Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu lie in O'Keeffe country to the west.

From Beaver Creek the outings are other mountain towns, Vail, Breckenridge and old silver-mining Leadville, all pleasant and quite similar to one another. Glenwood Springs adds a spa town, but nothing compares with Taos's mix of Hispanic villages and Santa Fe.

Beaver Creek is designed around families: a large ski school, learning areas, an ice rink, escalators from the car parks, warm cookies when the lifts close and a car-free plaza where older children can roam. Summer adds ropes courses and mini golf on the hilltop.

Taos welcomes children but does little specifically for them. Float trips, horse riding and the recreation centre pool work well for outdoorsy families, but every outing means a drive and the museums are small art collections.

Inside Beaver Creek you hardly need a car, thanks to the pedestrian core, the outdoor escalators, free shuttles and valley buses to Vail, and Eagle airport is only about half an hour away.

Taos is a car town. Only the plaza area is walkable, the Pueblo, gorge, ski valley and villages are spread across a wide valley, and the drive from Albuquerque takes about two and a half hours. Driving in winter needs care at both.

In Taos shopping means craft with roots: turquoise and silver, micaceous pottery and bread bought from makers at the Pueblo, Rio Grande weaving and carved santos, alongside galleries in the art-colony tradition. Collectors can spend days here.

Beaver Creek's plaza is a small upmarket cluster of ski wear, western boots and galleries of bronze sculpture. It is fine for browsing on a rest day, but it has less range and less local character.

Taos is far easier on the wallet. Its simple motels and New Mexican diners are fairly priced, and only the historic inns and ski-valley lodging charge resort rates. Budget for a hire car, though.

Beaver Creek is among the costliest vacations on the continent. Lodging, lift tickets, ski school and dining are all priced at the top, and staying in Avon or coming in summer helps only a little.

Beaver Creek has the fuller programme, with the Vilar Performing Arts Center in the village and, in summer, Bravo! Vail orchestras and the Vail Dance Festival in the amphitheatre twenty minutes away.

What Taos offers is rarer and less frequent: traditional dances at Taos Pueblo on feast days such as San Gerónimo, watched quietly and without cameras, plus a summer chamber music festival and local bands in bars.

Beaver Creek pampers you, while Taos lets the landscape do the work. In Beaver Creek that means big resort spas, outdoor hot tubs in the snow and a quiet, car-free village, with the huge mineral pool at Glenwood Springs about an hour away.

Taos is earthier and more spiritual: several different mineral waters in the pools at Ojo Caliente, primitive hot springs at the bottom of the Rio Grande gorge that you have to walk down to, and yoga and retreat centres in the silence of the plateau.