Mammoth Lakes or Snowbird?

Neither place has anything to do with the sea, but Mammoth Lakes at least offers a summer swim outdoors. In July and August people dip into Horseshoe Lake in the Lakes Basin or the slightly warmer water of Crowley Lake, although most visitors stay on the shore or go out in a boat.

At Snowbird, swimming means the resort's heated pools, or an hour's drive to the cold reservoirs of the Heber Valley. The Great Salt Lake is something to look at rather than swim in.

Mammoth Lakes is a real town that feeds a large winter crowd, so you have more choice: big breakfasts, tacos, steakhouses, beer brewed locally and a few more ambitious kitchens around the Village. It is still hearty mountain food, not a reason to come.

At Snowbird, every meal is eaten inside the resort. The dining room at the top of the tram has the view, the rest is cafeterias and après-ski burgers, and anyone who wants variety drives down to Salt Lake City once or twice a week.

Neither is a place for sightseeing. Mammoth Lakes has a small log-cabin museum telling its mining and settler story, and its real heritage sites are an hour or more away along the highway.

Snowbird has even less on site. The angular concrete lodges, built in 1971 to withstand avalanches, are its most distinctive buildings, and nothing visible survives of the canyon's silver-mining past. The difference is that Salt Lake City's museums and historic buildings are only forty minutes away.

Mammoth Lakes gives you more of an evening. The Village bars and the brewery taprooms fill after the lifts close, and on long weekends in the ski season they can run late, though the town goes quiet early the rest of the year.

At Snowbird the day peaks on a sunny deck and in a couple of lodge bars at the base, and most people are at dinner or in bed by mid-evening. A proper night out means driving the canyon road to Salt Lake City or Park City.

Both are first-rate mountain bases, but they offer different things. Mammoth Lakes gives breadth across the seasons: a huge ski mountain that turns into a bike park, granite lakes for kayaking and fishing, the basalt columns of Devils Postpile, Mono Lake's tufa towers and, once Tioga Pass opens, the Yosemite high country.

Snowbird is about the snow. Deep, dry powder falls into Little Cottonwood Canyon, and from Hidden Peak at about 3,350m you reach steep chutes and open bowls that link through Mineral Basin to Alta. In summer it is a smaller world of Albion Basin wildflowers, wilderness trails and climbing on the canyon granite.

Snowbird has more within easy reach. Salt Lake City, with Temple Square and the State Capitol, is forty minutes away, and Park City's Victorian Main Street is about an hour off, with Sundance, Midway and Ogden as quieter extras.

From Mammoth Lakes the outings are fewer and longer: the ghost town of Bodie, the sober internment site at Manzanar and small-town Bishop. In winter the Sierra passes close, which narrows the choice further.

Mammoth Lakes is the better bet for children of mixed ages. The ski school and beginner slopes suit small skiers, there is a tubing hill, and summer brings rowing boats, trout fishing and the gondola to the summit. Condominium kitchens make daily life simpler.

Snowbird's steep terrain suits teenagers and confident skiers more than toddlers. Its summer plaza, with a mountain coaster, alpine slide and ropes course, is good fun, and the car-free base is easy to manage. Neither has much for a stormy day, though Snowbird can at least reach Salt Lake City's zoo and children's museums.

Getting around is easy in each place only up to a point, and that point falls in a different spot in each. In Mammoth Lakes, free winter shuttles and the gondola from the Village cover a ski trip, and in summer the trolley and the Reds Meadow shuttle reach the lakes and the valley. Beyond that, a car is close to essential. The town is spread along its main roads, the Eastern Sierra sights are long drives apart, and winter roads sometimes need snow chains.

Snowbird draws the line more tightly. Within its car-free base, the lodges, the tram and the lifts are a short walk apart, so a ski stay needs no driving at all. Leaving is the hard part. One winding canyon road is the only way out, it jams on powder mornings and is sometimes closed for avalanche control, and anything down in the valley means a car or a shuttle.

Shopping is practical in both, with slightly more to browse in Mammoth Lakes. Alongside the ski shops it has good climbing and fly-fishing stores and a few galleries of landscape photography. Snowbird has a handful of base-area stores that are useful for forgotten goggles, and serious shopping means Park City's main street or the Salt Lake City malls.

Both are costly American ski resorts in winter, and the ways to save differ. At Mammoth Lakes, summer is the bargain season, since hiking, the lakes and scenic drives cost little, and self-catering in a condominium helps all year. At Snowbird, many visitors sleep in Salt Lake City hotels and drive up each morning, giving up the slopeside stay to save money, while multi-resort passes cut the cost of lift tickets.

Mammoth Lakes has a modest but year-round stage: a resident community theatre on the college campus, plus a long-running summer jazz festival, chamber music and concerts in mountain meadows.

Snowbird offers summer concerts on its plaza and oompah bands at its Oktoberfest weekends, and little else on the mountain. The symphony, opera and theatre are all down in Salt Lake City.

Mammoth Lakes has the more memorable soak. Its volcanic ground feeds primitive hot springs out in the sagebrush with the Sierra across the valley, and the hotel spas in town, along with the slow off-season pace, add to it.

Snowbird puts its relaxation in one place: a large rooftop spa on the main lodge, with a pool, hot tubs and steam rooms facing the canyon walls. For warm mineral water you would drive an hour to the limestone crater at Midway.