Estes Park or Winter Park, Colorado?

Neither town is for a beach vacation. Both are high in the Rockies, and their lakes are fed by snowmelt and too cold for a comfortable swim even in summer. At Estes Park, Lake Estes and the park's alpine lakes are for walking, paddling and fishing, and the swimming is in the indoor aquatic centre. Around Winter Park, Grand Lake and the Granby reservoirs are for boating, and the warm water is at the hot springs pools down the valley.

The food is very similar: hearty, meaty and casual, with elk, bison or trout on the menus and a couple of breweries in each town. The difference is in the rhythm. Estes Park eats like a summer gateway town, with big diner breakfasts before the trail and taffy and fudge shops on Elkhorn Avenue, and some kitchens cut back out of season. Winter Park's day revolves around the lifts, with breakfast burritos before first chair and green chile at slopeside lodges, and tables fill up early on busy winter weekends.

Estes Park has more to see, mostly because of the Stanley Hotel. The white Georgian Revival hotel F.O. Stanley built on a rise above the valley inspired The Shining, and you can tour its public rooms and hear its ghost stories. The town museum, which covers homesteading and early mountain tourism, and the working MacGregor Ranch below Lumpy Ridge are good for a rainy afternoon.

Winter Park has less still. It is a town that grew up around its ski area, and its heritage comes down to the railway story of the Moffat Tunnel and a small ranch museum in Fraser about the valley's homesteaders. Wherever you stay, a proper museum day means driving to Denver.

Winter Park has the livelier evenings, at least in ski season. The base village bars fill up when the lifts close, and on winter weekends and spring-break weeks the pubs along the main road stay noisy into the evening.

Estes Park goes to bed earlier. A few taprooms and saloon-style bars on Elkhorn Avenue get busy after a day of hiking, but most visitors are up before dawn for wildlife, and little goes on after ten. Neither town has clubs.

Both are first-rate mountain bases, but for different trips. Estes Park is about the national park. Meadows climb to alpine tundra and Longs Peak, hundreds of kilometres of trails lead to lakes and waterfalls, and elk, bighorn sheep and moose are part of everyday life. It is at its best for hiking and wildlife from summer into autumn, when the aspens turn gold.

Winter Park is about sliding and riding. It has two linked ski mountains, cross-country tracks, backcountry slopes on Berthoud Pass and, in summer, a well-known bike park and miles of singletrack around Fraser. The quieter west side of the same national park is about an hour north.

The choice of day trips is similar in size but different in character. From Estes Park you drive down the canyons to the Front Range towns: Boulder and the Flatirons, Fort Collins with its Old Town and breweries, and Denver a little further. In summer you can cross Trail Ridge Road to Grand Lake.

From Winter Park the outings are mostly mountain towns. Georgetown and Idaho Springs, with their Victorian mining streets and narrow-gauge railway, are over Berthoud Pass, and Grand Lake and Hot Sulphur Springs are close by. Winter storms on the pass can upset those plans.

Both towns are small, safe and family-friendly, and both share the same drawbacks: altitude that can tire children for the first day or two, and few indoor options when it rains. Estes Park is the nature-and-wildlife choice, with elk in town, junior ranger activities, easy lake walks at Sprague and Bear, and the tramway up Prospect Mountain.

Winter Park is the ski-school choice, with gentle learning slopes, a large children's ski school, and tubing and skating in winter. In summer it adds an alpine slide and easy bike trails.

Estes Park has the better centre for walking. Elkhorn Avenue and the Riverwalk are compact and pleasant on foot. Away from them, though, you depend on a car. The free shuttles to lodgings and the Bear Lake corridor only run in the warmer months, there is no rail link, and summer weekends bring heavy traffic and hard parking.

Winter Park is easier to manage without a car. A free shuttle bus links the ski base, the town and Fraser, and the base village is walkable, so a ski week works without driving. You still need a car for trailheads, Grand Lake and the national park. Lodgings are strung out along the highway, and the drive up from Denver over Berthoud Pass needs winter tyres when it snows.

Estes Park makes the better hour of browsing. Elkhorn Avenue has western wear, taffy makers and a few galleries selling wildlife photography and jewellery among the souvenir shops. Winter Park's shops are mostly practical, for ski tuning, bike repairs and forgotten gear. For anything serious, both towns send you to Denver, and Estes Park also to Boulder.

Both are expensive resort towns, and the cheaper season is the opposite in each. Estes Park is at its most expensive in summer and early autumn, when people come for the park, and much cheaper in winter and spring.

Winter Park costs most in ski season, when lift tickets, rentals and lessons add up, but is easier on the budget in summer. In both, a condo or cabin with a kitchen saves money, and in Winter Park staying in Fraser rather than at the base village helps too.

Neither town has much in the way of performances. Both offer free summer concerts outdoors, and for theatre or an orchestra you need to go to Denver. What is on offer differs a little. Estes Park has music and ghost-story evenings at the Stanley Hotel and the Scottish-Irish Highland Festival with pipe bands each September. In Winter Park, outside summer, live music mostly means a band in an après-ski bar.

Winter Park is better for unwinding. Most lodgings have a hot tub for after a day outside, and there are a few spas at the resort and a nearby guest ranch. Above all it has Hot Sulphur Springs, where mineral pools step down a hillside above the Colorado River.

Estes Park has no hot springs and only a few lodge spas. Its kind of rest is quiet: a riverside cabin, elk at dusk and empty evenings, especially in winter and spring.