Mammoth Lakes or Steamboat Springs?

Neither town is anywhere near a coast, but Mammoth Lakes does a little better for summer swimming. Horseshoe Lake in the Lakes Basin is a recognised place for a cold dip in July and August, and Crowley Lake, lower down, warms slightly more.

Steamboat's reservoirs at Steamboat Lake and Stagecoach are just as chilly, and the classic way to get wet there is floating down the Yampa River on a tube, which is more of a lazy afternoon than a swim.

The two eat at much the same level: filling resort-town food to recover from a day outdoors, with local breweries in both and nothing to plan a trip around. The difference is in flavour. Mammoth's choice leans towards ski-lodge staples such as big breakfasts, burgers, tacos and pizza around the Village, while Steamboat's cooking has a Yampa Valley ranching accent, with Colorado lamb and beef on Lincoln Avenue menus.

Steamboat Springs has more of a past you can actually see. Lincoln Avenue still has some of its old western storefronts, the Tread of Pioneers Museum occupies a Victorian house, and Howelsen Hill in town is one of the continent's oldest ski areas, with a long line of Olympians behind it.

Mammoth Lakes is almost entirely modern lodges and condominiums, and its small log-cabin museum on mining and settler history is about all there is. Its real history lies a drive away.

Evenings in both towns centre on après-ski, and both go quiet early outside the busy weeks, with no clubs in either. Steamboat has the more natural route for a night out, starting at the gondola base and then moving to the saloons and brewpubs along Lincoln Avenue. In Mammoth, the drinking stays around the Village and the bars by the lifts, plus a few taprooms, and only long ski weekends tend to run late.

Both towns are mountain towns first and foremost, and the outdoors is excellent in each. Mammoth Lakes is higher, at around 2,400m, and its landscape is more dramatic and varied: granite lakes in the Lakes Basin, the basalt columns of Devils Postpile, Mono Lake's tufa towers, and Yosemite's high country within reach in summer.

Steamboat is gentler and greener, with aspen-glade tree skiing in its light Champagne Powder, night skiing at Howelsen Hill, fly fishing on the Yampa and elk and moose in the valley. The Mount Zirkel Wilderness offers long backpacking routes for those who want solitude.

Mammoth Lakes clearly has more worth driving to. Bodie, the gold-rush ghost town, is a little over an hour north, Manzanar is a well-told Second World War site to the south, and Bishop, Lee Vining and June Lake make easy outings along the same highway.

Steamboat is far more isolated. The nearest towns are tiny ranching communities, Vail and Grand Lake are about two hours away over the mountains, and Denver is about three, so time away from town is spent in the hills.

Both work for families who love the outdoors, with large ski schools, gentle beginner slopes, small safe towns and altitude that can tire young children at first. Steamboat has the answer to a bad-weather day that Mammoth lacks: the Old Town Hot Springs complex in town, with warm pools, slides and a climbing wall, plus summer tubing and the rodeo.

Mammoth makes up for it with a snow-tubing hill, rowing boats and trout fishing in the Lakes Basin, and condominiums with kitchens, but it involves more driving between activities.

Neither town is easy to get around without a car once you leave town, and the sights of both lie up mountain roads that need winter tyres or chains. In town, Mammoth Lakes spreads along a few roads, with free winter shuttles, a gondola from the Village and a summer trolley and Reds Meadow shuttle. Steamboat has a flat, walkable downtown and a bus that connects it to the ski base a few kilometres away, so it is a little easier to stay car-free in town.

Steamboat offers more to browse. The western-wear stores on Lincoln Avenue sell boots, hats and saddle-blanket goods, and F.M. Light & Sons, a family outfitter since the early twentieth century, is a local landmark in its own right.

In Mammoth Lakes, shopping is mostly about gear: good ski, climbing and fly-fishing shops, a few landscape photography galleries and souvenirs around the Village.

Both are expensive in the ski season, when lift tickets, slopeside lodging and restaurant meals push costs high, and in both a self-catering condominium is the main way to save. Summer is the cheaper time in each. Mammoth's summer pleasures cost little beyond a park pass, while Steamboat has free town buses and trails, though some places there close in the cheaper spring and late autumn weeks.

Steamboat has the fuller summer. The Strings Music Festival has run for decades in its pavilion at the edge of town, with chamber music, jazz, bluegrass and touring acts, and Perry-Mansfield in Strawberry Park, founded in 1913, puts on student theatre and dance.

Mammoth Lakes has a real but smaller offer: a community theatre on the college campus throughout the year, and a summer jazz festival and meadow concerts against the mountains.

Hot springs are part of both places, but Steamboat makes far more of them. The town takes its name from a spring, Old Town Hot Springs offers spring-fed pools in the middle of town, and Strawberry Park's rock-lined pools in a wooded creek valley, about 11km up the road, are especially lovely on a snowy evening.

Mammoth's springs are wilder and simpler: undeveloped pools out in the sagebrush, reached by dirt road with no facilities, as well as hotel spas and hot tubs back in town.