Carmel-by-the-Sea or Snowbird?

Carmel at least has a real beach: a curve of white sand at the foot of Ocean Avenue, with a view across the bay to Pebble Beach. Cold water and heavy surf make it a place for walks and sunsets rather than swimming. Snowbird has no shore at all, so a summer swim means the resort's heated pools or a chilly reservoir in the Heber Valley about an hour's drive away.

Carmel eats far better. Its cottage bistros and French and Italian dining rooms cook with what Monterey Bay brings in, such as Dungeness crab, sand dabs and calamari, along with Castroville artichokes, and tasting rooms pour Pinot Noir from the Santa Lucia Highlands. What it lacks is range. Dinners are refined, expensive and early, and there is little that is cheap or casual, so Monterey is where you go for a market or an easy meal.

At Snowbird you eat from a small, captive set of lodge restaurants and the summit dining room, which is worth it for the view. There is casual food in the slopeside cafeterias and in the après-ski bars serving burgers and pizza, but it costs resort prices and none of it is local. For variety, guests drive forty minutes down the canyon to Salt Lake City, usually once or twice a week.

Carmel has a small but real set of sights: the 1771 mission where Junípero Serra is buried, the storybook cottages and bohemian timber houses, Tor House and the many galleries. Together they fill a morning or two. Snowbird has essentially nothing to see. It is a resort of concrete lodges built in 1971, and the canyon's mining and quarrying past has left almost no trace, so anyone wanting museums or historic buildings must go down to the city.

Neither place is for late nights, but the evenings feel different. In Carmel an evening means wine in a tasting room, a long candlelit dinner and quiet streets by ten. At Snowbird the high point comes earlier, at après-ski in the lodge bars and on the sunny deck, before everyone heads to bed ahead of the first tram.

For anything livelier, Carmel's escape is the modest bars on Monterey's Alvarado Street. From Snowbird it means a mountain drive to Salt Lake City or Park City.

Both are outstanding, and nature is the main reason to visit either one, but the landscapes could hardly be more different. Carmel's is the sea. It has the granite coves, cypress and sea otters of Point Lobos, whales offshore in winter and spring, Bixby Bridge and the Big Sur redwoods, and kayaking or kelp-forest diving in Monterey Bay.

Snowbird's is altitude, and it has the edge for sheer scale. The tram climbs to about 3,350m into some of the deepest snow on the continent. In summer the same slopes open onto the wildflowers of Albion Basin, the Lone Peak wilderness and climbing on the canyon's granite walls.

Carmel has more within easy reach. Monterey's Cannery Row and adobe old town, the Victorian streets of Pacific Grove and the Carmel Valley wineries are all close by. Salinas, San Juan Bautista and the Santa Cruz boardwalk make fuller days out, and San Francisco is possible as a long one.

From Snowbird, two outings stand out: Salt Lake City with its Mormon pioneer heritage, and Park City with its Victorian Main Street. After those come smaller pleasures such as Midway, Sundance and Ogden's 25th Street, with mostly open country beyond.

Carmel works better for most families. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is fifteen minutes away and can fill a whole day, and there are tide pools at Point Lobos and Pacific Grove and sand for digging, although the sea is too rough for small children to paddle in.

Snowbird suits a narrower group: teenagers and confident young skiers rather than toddlers, on a mountain known for expert terrain and thin air. In summer its mountain coaster, alpine slide and ropes course add some fun, but the zoo and children's museums are down in the city.

Snowbird is easier once you are there. The lodges, lifts and tram are a short walk apart on a car-free base, and many rooms open straight onto the slopes. Its weak point is the single canyon road, which jams on powder mornings and can be closed for avalanche control.

Carmel's square-mile village is walkable, though the hill down to the beach is steep and the unlit lanes are dark at night. Almost everything that draws people here, from Point Lobos to the wineries, needs a car, and the local buses are sparse.

Carmel makes for a pleasant afternoon of browsing. There are galleries of plein-air painting and photography, small boutiques tucked into courtyards and passageways, and two small open-air centres. Snowbird offers only rental and gear shops at the base, useful for replacing lost goggles and little else. Keen shoppers at either place end up driving, from Carmel to the malls around Monterey and from Snowbird to Salt Lake City.

Both are expensive, and there is little to choose between them. In Carmel the money goes on boutique inns, refined dinners and wine tasting. At Snowbird it goes on lift tickets, rentals and slopeside rooms.

The ways to save are different. In Carmel you stay in Monterey or Seaside and enjoy the free beach and coastal walks. At Snowbird a multi-resort pass, a Salt Lake City hotel or a summer stay brings the cost down.

Carmel has a real summer season. The Carmel Bach Festival has run since 1935, the Sunset Center hosts concerts and the Forest Theater puts on plays under the pines, with the Monterey Jazz Festival close by each September. Snowbird offers plaza concerts in summer, oompah bands at its Oktoberfest and the odd après-ski band. For symphony, opera or theatre you have to go to Salt Lake City.

Carmel offers more ways to unwind. There are spas at the Pebble Beach lodges and the Carmel Valley resorts, in-room treatments at village inns, misty mornings and long walks, which suits a slow weekend for two. Snowbird's relaxation centres on one large spa on top of the main lodge, with a rooftop pool and hot tubs facing the canyon walls, best after a day on the slopes. Neither has a bathing culture of its own, though Snowbird has an unusual extra: the warm mineral crater at Homestead in Midway, about an hour away.