Mammoth Lakes or Winter Park, Colorado?

Neither town has a beach, but Mammoth Lakes at least gives you a swim. In July and August people take dips at Horseshoe Lake, and the lower Crowley Lake warms a little more, though the water is never warm and the season is short.

Winter Park's snowmelt lakes at Grand Lake and around Granby stay too cold for swimming even in July. They suit boating and paddling, so anyone wanting a swim ends up in a hotel pool or the hot springs down the valley.

Both towns serve ski-town food, but Mammoth Lakes has a little more range. It feeds a large winter crowd, so there are a few more ambitious kitchens in and around the Village and beer brewed in town.

Winter Park's menu has more Rocky Mountain character, with green chile, breakfast burritos before first chair, and elk or trout at the better dinner rooms. Choice is thinner unless you drive to Fraser. In neither town is eating a reason to go.

There is next to nothing to see in either town. Mammoth Lakes has a small log-cabin museum on its mining past. Winter Park's heritage is railway history around the Moffat Tunnel and a ranch museum in Fraser about homesteading. The real difference is distance: from Winter Park, Denver's museums are a day's outing, while Mammoth's nearest history sites are spread along empty highway.

Evenings in both towns revolve around après-ski, with bars at the lift bases and brewery taprooms afterwards. Mammoth Lakes can run late on long ski-season weekends. Winter Park gets loud during spring-break weeks, but its family crowd heads to bed early. Neither has clubs, and both go quiet in summer.

Both are first-rate mountain bases, and the difference is in the scenery. Mammoth Lakes sits in the volcanic, high and dry Eastern Sierra, with granite lakes above town, hot pools at Hot Creek, Mono Lake's tufa and Rainbow Falls. Its ski season often lasts into early summer, and once Tioga Pass opens, the Yosemite high country is about an hour away.

Winter Park is forested Rockies country. Its two linked mountains pair easy groomed runs with the steep bumps of Mary Jane. Summer is all about the famous bike park and the singletrack around Fraser. Rocky Mountain National Park, with its moose, elk and tundra, is an hour north, but summer hikes there have to dodge the afternoon storms.

Day trips from the two towns are of different kinds. From Winter Park you reach real towns: the Victorian mining streets and narrow-gauge railway of Georgetown and Idaho Springs, the boardwalk at Grand Lake, and Denver or Boulder if the pass is clear.

Mammoth Lakes offers history more than towns. Highlights are the gold-rush ghost town at Bodie and the internment camp at Manzanar, with Bishop and June Lake for shorter outings. Weather limits both: Colorado's high passes can slow in storms, and the Sierra passes close for the whole winter.

Both towns work well for outdoor families, and Winter Park is a little easier to manage. Its compact base village keeps lifts, ski school, tubing and skating within walking distance, and summer adds an alpine slide, mini golf and climbing walls.

Mammoth Lakes gives children rowing boats, trout fishing and picnics in the Lakes Basin, plus the gondola to the summit. However, getting between lakes, trailheads and town usually means driving. Neither town has much for a wet day, and Winter Park's greater altitude and colder valley make the first nights harder.

For skiers, the two are equally easy to manage without a car. Mammoth Lakes has free shuttles and a gondola from the Village to the mountain, and in summer a trolley and the Reds Meadow shuttle cover the lakes. Winter Park's free bus links the base, town and Fraser.

Beyond that, you need a car in both. The bigger difference is getting there: Winter Park is a mountain drive or shuttle ride from Denver over Berthoud Pass. Mammoth has no train and is a long drive from any major city.

Shopping in both towns is about gear, not browsing. Mammoth Lakes has more variety, with climbing and fly-fishing shops alongside the ski stores and a few galleries of Sierra landscape photography. Winter Park sticks to ski, bike and outdoor clothing shops, and anything more means a trip to Denver.

Neither is cheap in winter, but Winter Park is somewhat easier on the wallet. It is cheaper than Colorado's glamour resorts, and condos and motels in Fraser undercut the base village.

At Mammoth Lakes, lift tickets are among the world's costliest, and even groceries carry resort prices. Both towns become far more affordable in summer, when the trails and lakes cost little.

Mammoth Lakes has the livelier small-town stage. A resident community theatre company performs year-round at the college, and summer brings a long-running jazz festival and chamber music. Winter Park has no theatre, only free summer concerts in the park and bands in après-ski bars, so for anything more you go to Denver.

Mammoth Lakes offers hot pools out in the sagebrush. These primitive soaks are reached by dirt road, have no facilities, and look across the valley to the Sierra. At sunset they can get crowded. Back in town, the big hotels and lodges have spas and massage.

Winter Park's bathing is more developed. At Hot Sulphur Springs, half an hour west, mineral pools of different temperatures step down a hillside above the Colorado River, which suits anyone who wants facilities with their soak. Closer to the lifts, the main way to unwind is a condo hot tub, and the valley is at its calmest in late spring and autumn.