Deer Valley or Palm Springs?

Neither has a coast, so swimming is a sideline in both. At Deer Valley it means the Jordanelle and Deer Creek reservoirs, boating lakes with sandy edges that are pleasant only on hot July and August afternoons.

Palm Springs has no lake worth visiting, but the whole stay is built around the pool, with one at almost every hotel, motel and rental house and a long hot season to use it. Lounging by the water is part of every day there in a way it never is in the mountains.

Both eat well at the comfortable end of the scale, and neither has a cuisine of its own. Deer Valley and Park City lean upmarket, with polished lodge dining on the mountain, the base-area turkey chili and a strong run of steakhouses, sushi and bistros around Main Street.

Palm Springs is more casual: patio brunches, poolside cocktails and mid-range American cooking on Palm Canyon Drive. Further out in the valley you will find date shakes from the Indio groves and Mexican taquerias and panaderias in the eastern towns. Park City is better for a smart dinner after skiing, Palm Springs for long, unhurried grazing.

Palm Springs gives a curious traveller far more to look at. You can spend a good day by bike or car among the mid-century houses by Albert Frey and Richard Neutra and the folded roofs of Twin Palms and Vista Las Palmas. The Palm Springs Art Museum and the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, which tells the Cahuilla story, round it out.

Deer Valley's heritage is borrowed from Park City: the restored silver-mining Main Street, the Park City Museum in the old city hall and the ski-jump towers of the Olympic Park. That is an afternoon, not a theme for the trip.

Neither is a place for a big night, but Palm Springs has more going on and more character. Arenas Road's LGBTQ bars, drag nights, retro cocktail lounges and spring pool parties make for sociable evenings, although the town empties in summer.

Deer Valley itself goes quiet once the lifts close. The going out moves to the saloons and après-ski bars of Park City's Main Street, which are lively on ski-season weekends but close early, and most guests head to bed in time for first chair.

Both are strong, but Deer Valley is a mountain base of a higher order. In winter it combines its own immaculate pistes with Park City Mountain and the deep powder of Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude. In summer those slopes become hundreds of kilometres of biking and hiking trails, with fly-fishing on the Provo River and the Uinta lakes within reach.

Palm Springs offers a desert landscape instead. There are canyons with palm oases, the tramway up to the pine forest of Mount San Jacinto, and Joshua Tree about an hour away. Its outdoor season runs from autumn to spring, because the summer heat limits hiking to just after dawn or the cool upper mountain.

The day trips are about equal in weight, and modest on both sides. From Deer Valley the main outing is Salt Lake City, about forty minutes away, with Temple Square and good museums. Closer by are the Swiss-styled village of Midway, the Heber Valley steam railway and Sundance.

The outings from Palm Springs are quirkier: the pine village of Idyllwild, the lived-in film set of Pioneertown, the abandoned resort towns and Salvation Mountain by the Salton Sea, and the Temecula wineries. Deer Valley has a real city within reach, while Palm Springs has odder small places, all reached by car.

For families who ski, Deer Valley is the easier choice. It has well-run children's ski schools, wide beginner runs with no snowboarders, ski-to-the-door lodging, and tubing, an alpine coaster and ziplines at the Olympic Park. Summer lift rides keep children busy outside winter, though lessons add up and the altitude can tire small children at first.

Palm Springs leans towards adults, with many adults-only boutique hotels and a social life built around cocktails. The Living Desert, the tramway and the Air Museum make good outings, but a family stay there is mostly a pool trip, and it works better from the big resorts further down the valley.

Deer Valley is easier to manage without a car. Fare-free buses link its base areas with Main Street, Park City Mountain and Kimball Junction, and slopeside lodging means the car can stay parked. Reaching Salt Lake City or the Cottonwood Canyons, though, means driving on winter roads.

Palm Springs has a flat, walkable downtown and an airport right on the edge of town. Beyond that, the valley buses are slow and sparse, and the tramway, the canyons and Joshua Tree all need a car. In summer, walking anywhere at midday is out of the question.

Palm Springs has a real speciality: mid-century furniture, lighting and vintage clothing in the Uptown Design District. It also has Village Fest downtown, the luxury shops of El Paseo in Palm Desert and the big Cabazon outlets twenty minutes west.

Deer Valley's shopping is Park City's Main Street, with galleries, western boots and hats, boutiques and, above all, ski and outdoor gear, plus an outlet centre at Kimball Junction. Shop there for mountain kit rather than plan a shopping trip around it.

Neither is cheap, but Deer Valley is in a class of its own for cost. Slopeside lodging is mostly luxury, lift access is priced at the top of the North American market, and ski school and rental come on top. Summer brings some relief, and staying in the Heber Valley or Salt Lake City cuts costs further.

Palm Springs is pricey from winter into spring and on festival weekends, and the hire car adds to the bill. Still, simple motels work all year, and summer rooms drop sharply for anyone who can take the heat, which makes it clearly the cheaper of the two for most budgets.

Palm Springs has more live entertainment. Coachella and Stagecoach fill the Indio polo grounds each April, and the McCallum Theatre and the valley's casinos book touring acts. Drag cabaret and piano bars give the town its own flavour, though the programme largely stops in summer.

Deer Valley's best season is summer, just when Palm Springs goes quiet, with the Utah Symphony's outdoor festival at the Snow Park amphitheatre and picnics on the grass. The 1920s Egyptian Theatre on Main Street keeps plays and small concerts going for the rest of the year.

Palm Springs was founded on a hot spring and is made for doing very little. You can soak in the Agua Caliente bathhouse downtown, or in the spa motels of Desert Hot Springs, which fill their pools with mineral water straight from the ground. The slow pace of late breakfasts and days by the pool does the rest.

Deer Valley's calm is the luxury-lodge kind: polished hotel spas, hot tubs on snowy terraces and massages for tired ski legs. It has no bathing tradition, and its one unusual soak, the Homestead Crater in Midway, is half an hour's drive away.