Copper Mountain or Fort Collins?

Neither place is for swimming, but Fort Collins at least has a summer option. At Copper Mountain the Summit County reservoirs are cold from snowmelt even in July, so a swim means a heated lodge pool or a hot tub.

Fort Collins sits lower and gets hotter. Horsetooth Reservoir in the foothills has a designated swim beach and coves full of paddleboards on July and August afternoons. It is a pleasant way to spend a hot day, not a reason to choose the city.

Copper Mountain feeds skiers. You get burgers and chilli at the mid-mountain lodges and a few pizza and Mexican places in the village, and condo kitchens do much of the work. For anything more varied, guests drive to Frisco or Breckenridge.

Fort Collins is the better place to eat and especially to drink. The long-established breweries on the north side of Old Town run tours, and taprooms with food trucks outside are spread across the city, enough to keep beer lovers busy for several days. The food itself means gastropubs, tacos and a few farm-to-table kitchens rather than a local cuisine, and the summer farmers' markets sell Palisade peaches.

Copper Mountain has no sights of its own. It is a purpose-built village of condos and lodges, and the area's mining-era history belongs to Breckenridge and Leadville. Fort Collins offers a modest but real day of culture: the red-brick and sandstone Old Town around its pedestrian square, the Museum of Discovery, the Victorian Avery House and the galleries on the Colorado State University campus.

Evenings at Copper Mountain peak early. On winter afternoons skiers in boots fill the bars at the base of the lifts, most people are back in their condos by late evening, and outside the ski season the village goes very quiet.

Fort Collins has a proper night out, if a casual one. The university keeps the pubs, sports bars, rooftop patios and taprooms around Old Town busy at weekends. There are few clubs, though, and the crowds thin out during student breaks.

Both are outdoor places, but Copper Mountain is the stronger pick when the high mountains themselves are the trip. It is a large ski area with treeless bowls above 3,600m, and several more Summit County resorts and Vail are a short drive away. In summer, the Colorado Trail, the path over Vail Pass and fourteen-thousand-foot peaks all start close by.

Fort Collins sits where the plains meet the foothills, so its outdoors is gentler and more varied. There are trails at Horsetooth and Lory State Park, rafting and fly fishing in the Poudre Canyon, and Rocky Mountain National Park about an hour and a half away. Winter there means snowshoes and cross-country skis, since the big downhill resorts are several hours off.

The two are about equal for excursions, but the places you visit differ in kind. From Copper Mountain the outings are mountain towns: Breckenridge's Victorian main street and silver-boom Leadville, each about half an hour away, Vail over the pass, and the narrow-gauge railway at Georgetown on the road to Denver.

Fort Collins looks towards the plains and the cities of the Front Range instead. Its outings include Boulder's Pearl Street, the museums of Denver, Estes Park at the gateway to the national park, and Cheyenne's capitol and frontier museum across the Wyoming line. Both need a car for almost every trip, and from Copper the drive to Denver can slow badly on ski weekends.

Copper Mountain has the edge for families, at least on an active trip. Children are kept busy by the car-free village core, slopes separated by ability, a large children's ski school, snow tubing, a mountain coaster and an indoor trampoline centre. At nearly 3,000m, though, the first couple of days can bring headaches and poor sleep.

Fort Collins is easy and calm rather than exciting. It has neighbourhood playgrounds, flat cycle paths along the river, the dome theatre at the Museum of Discovery, the farm at Lee Martinez Park and summer days at the reservoir. For a zoo or an amusement park, families drive to Denver.

Both places are easy to get around within a small core and depend on a car beyond it, but the cores work differently. At Copper Mountain, walkways, lifts and a free shuttle link the villages, and free county buses reach Frisco, Breckenridge and Keystone. Getting there, though, means two hours by road from Denver airport and sometimes a hard winter drive on I-70.

Fort Collins is a cycling city. Protected lanes, a bike-share scheme and long off-street trails connect Old Town with the campus, the breweries and the parks, and a rapid-bus line runs along the main corridor. The suburbs spread out, however, so the foothills and day trips still need a hire car.

Copper Mountain's shops sell what you need for the slopes: rental skis, outdoor gear and resort-branded clothing. For more choice, people drive to the Silverthorne outlets or Breckenridge. Fort Collins is pleasant for browsing, with independent boutiques, bookshops, vintage clothing, cycling shops and Colorado-made gifts within a few blocks of Old Town.

Fort Collins is clearly the cheaper stay. At Copper Mountain, lift access, slope-side lodging, equipment rental and mountain meals all add up. The ways to soften that are cooking in a condo, staying down in Frisco or Silverthorne, or coming outside the winter season.

Fort Collins is mid-priced for the United States. It has chain hotels along the highways and reasonably priced taprooms, and its trails, river paths and Old Town cost nothing. The main extra costs are a hire car and the steep hotel rates on graduation and football weekends.

Copper Mountain has summer concert weekends on the village plaza and acoustic sets at après-ski, and no theatre at all. The nearest real programme is Breckenridge's summer classical season.

Fort Collins has a regional but genuine programme. The Lincoln Center hosts touring Broadway shows, dance and the local symphony, the university's arts centre stages concerts, opera and theatre during term, and indie and bluegrass bands play small stages in Old Town. Only the biggest touring acts pass it by for Denver.

Neither place has a bathing tradition or hot springs nearby, so the difference is in how you unwind. At Copper Mountain that means an outdoor hot tub looking up at the slopes after a day's skiing, the athletic club's pools and massages, and very quiet evenings, though the altitude can spoil sleep for the first couple of nights.

Fort Collins has only ordinary day spas and yoga studios, but its unhurried pace, shaded river paths and quiet neighbourhoods make it restful in a different way. The nearest mineral soak from there is at Idaho Springs, a drive of nearly two hours.