Steamboat Springs or Winter Park, Colorado?

Neither town has anything like a beach, and swimming is a minor part of either trip. In Steamboat, summer water time means tubing the Yampa right through town, and a few people take cold swims in Steamboat Lake and Stagecoach in July and August. Winter Park's nearby lakes around Grand Lake and Granby are used for boating and paddling more than swimming, so a hotel pool or the hot springs down the valley are the realistic options there.

Steamboat has a slightly better food scene, mainly because Lincoln Avenue gives it a real downtown to eat in. There you'll find steakhouses serving Colorado lamb and beef, hearty western cooking rooted in the valley's ranches, and a couple of more ambitious kitchens.

Winter Park's eating is spread between slopeside lodges and the highway through town: burgers, green chile, barbecue, and the breakfast burrito before first chair. Fraser adds a few more choices. In both towns, food fills you up after a day outdoors rather than giving you a reason to visit.

Steamboat has more to show for its past, though not much. Lincoln Avenue keeps its old western storefronts, the Tread of Pioneers Museum tells the homesteading and ski-jumping story, and Howelsen Hill has turned out generations of Olympians. That fills a pleasant afternoon. Winter Park offers less: the railway history of the Moffat Tunnel and a small ranch museum in Fraser. A day of museums there means driving to Denver.

Evenings run on après-ski in both towns, and neither has clubs or anything that goes on into the small hours. Steamboat's version moves from the gondola base down to the saloons and brewpubs on Lincoln Avenue, which gives a night out a proper main street to wander. Winter Park's crowd starts at the base village bars and moves to taprooms along the highway. Because so many guests are families and early risers, it tends to empty sooner.

The mountains are the reason to visit either town, and both deliver in full, but the terrain has a different character. Steamboat is known for dry Champagne Powder and tree skiing through aspen glades, with backcountry on Rabbit Ears Pass. In summer you get the Mount Zirkel Wilderness for backpacking, plus fly fishing on the Yampa and golden aspens in autumn.

Winter Park sits higher and feels more alpine. Its two linked mountains pair groomed cruisers with Mary Jane's steep bumps, and the season often runs well into spring. Its lift-served bike park is one of the best known in the country. Rocky Mountain National Park is about an hour north, with high tundra, elk and moose.

Winter Park is far better placed for outings. In about an hour you can cross Berthoud Pass to the Victorian brick main streets of Georgetown and Idaho Springs. Grand Lake's boardwalk and Hot Sulphur Springs lie close by in the other direction, and Denver and Boulder are within reach when the pass is clear.

Steamboat is remote, and the ranching towns near it are only worth a coffee stop. Anywhere with real interest is two or three hours of mountain driving away, so excursions from there mean heading into the hills.

Both towns work equally well for families who like being outdoors, with strong children's ski schools and gentle beginner slopes. Steamboat's strength is in town: the Old Town Hot Springs has slides and a climbing wall, Howelsen Hill is a quiet spot for first turns, and summer brings tubing and the rodeo.

Winter Park's compact base village keeps everything within a short walk of the lifts, and it adds snow tubing, a skating rink, an alpine slide and mini golf. It sits about 650m higher than Steamboat, though, so altitude headaches and sharp cold are more likely to bother small children there.

Getting around is about equally easy in both, but the towns are laid out differently. Steamboat has a flat, walkable downtown with a bus to the ski base a few kilometres east, and a regional airport at Hayden. Winter Park runs a free shuttle through the valley, and its base village is walkable, but the town itself is strung out along a highway with no centre to stroll. Both need a car for trailheads and springs, and both involve mountain roads that call for winter tyres.

Neither town is worth a trip for its shops, but Steamboat gives you something to actually browse. Lincoln Avenue's stores sell the clothes the valley still wears, western boots, hats and ranch-style goods, and F.M. Light & Sons, the old family outfitter, is a landmark in its own right. With a few galleries in between, an hour on the main street shows you the town's character, and a proper cowboy hat makes a better souvenir than a logo fleece.

Winter Park's shops are there to keep you on the mountain. Rental counters, tuning benches, bike mechanics and the odd gift shop sit in the base village and along the highway. They can fix a broken binding or replace a lost glove, but there is no street to wander, and if you want to shop for its own sake you'll be heading back down towards the city.

Neither is cheap, but Winter Park is the easier of the two to afford. It is cheaper than Colorado's glamour resorts, and condos and motels in Fraser cost less than staying at the base village.

Steamboat charges resort prices across the board in ski season, especially around Christmas and spring breaks. Summer and the shoulder months bring costs down, although some places close in the quietest weeks. In both towns, a condo kitchen and free summer trails are the best ways to save.

With the Strings Music Festival, Steamboat gets a real summer arts season. For decades its pavilion has put on chamber music, jazz and bluegrass, and Perry-Mansfield, a performing-arts school and camp founded in 1913, stages student theatre and dance in Strawberry Park. In the colder months the town still has a small community orchestra.

Winter Park offers free concerts in the town park in summer and a band in an après-ski bar for the rest of the year. There is no theatre or concert hall, so for a proper performance you drive to Denver.

The town of Steamboat takes its name from a hot spring, and soaking is central to a visit. Locals use the spring-fed pools of the Old Town Hot Springs all year, and Strawberry Park's rock pools in a snowy creek valley are among the best experiences in the Colorado mountains.

Winter Park's relaxation is more ordinary: clean air, quiet forest and the hot tub at your condo, with a few resort spas for tired legs. For real mineral bathing you drive about half an hour to Hot Sulphur Springs, where terraced pools sit above the Colorado River.