Beaver Creek

Beaver Creek sits at about 2,500m in the Colorado Rockies, more than a thousand kilometres from any sea. In summer there is a small sandy swimming area at Nottingham Lake down in Avon, and some families use it on hot afternoons, but the snowmelt water is chilly and the lake is tiny. Otherwise swimming means a heated hotel pool, often outdoors with a mountain view. Nobody chooses this place for the water.

Eating in Beaver Creek is resort dining. Expect polished mountain restaurants with elk, Colorado lamb, trout and long wine lists, on-mountain lodges you reach by chairlift or snowcat sleigh for dinner, and comfortable après-ski spots around the village plaza. The cooking is often good, but it is mostly the same refined menus done by different kitchens, and there is no local cuisine to discover.

Cheaper, everyday food is down the hill in Avon and Edwards, where you find taquerias, breakfast diners and brewpubs that serve the people who work in the valley. Vail, a short drive away, widens the choice. A food lover will eat well but will not find much depth.

Beaver Creek was built as a ski resort around 1980, and it has no historic quarter, major museum or famous landmark. The village is attractive in a planned, alpine-lodge style, with stone and timber buildings and outdoor art around the plaza, but you can see it all in an hour. The nearest real history, the mining towns and old railway country of the Rockies, needs a drive.

Evenings here begin with après-ski, a glass of wine or a cocktail by a fire pit on the plaza as the lifts close, and for most guests they end not long after dinner. The village was designed as a calm, upscale family resort, and it feels that way, with a few hotel bars and lounges and almost nothing late. Anyone who wants a livelier night drives the short distance to Vail, where a few bars stay busy in winter.

This is first and foremost a mountain. Beaver Creek's ski area rises from the village to about 3,500m, with long groomed cruisers, steep glades and famously uncrowded slopes, linked to Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead and with Vail's huge terrain a short ride away. Winters are cold, dry and sunny, and the snow is reliably good from December into April.

In summer the lifts carry hikers and mountain bikers into aspen and spruce forest, and trails lead into the Holy Cross Wilderness and the jagged Gore Range. The Eagle and Colorado Rivers offer gold-medal fly-fishing and whitewater rafting, and dramatic Glenwood Canyon is about an hour west. Autumn brings gold aspens. Altitude is the only real catch: take the first day slowly.

The realistic outings are other mountain towns. Vail, about twenty minutes away, has its Tyrolean-style pedestrian village. Leadville, about an hour over Tennessee Pass, is a Victorian silver-mining town at over 3,000m with an old main street and a mining museum. Breckenridge, about an hour east, keeps a historic gold-rush centre, and Glenwood Springs, about an hour west, is a pleasant old spa town.

Aspen and Denver are a little beyond an easy day, around two hours or more depending on road and weather. The list is pleasant but small, and the towns are similar in character; nothing here is a major heritage site.

Beaver Creek is designed to make family ski vacations easy. The ski school is large and well organised, there are gentle learning areas and children's terrain on the mountain, and the village has an outdoor ice rink, covered escalators up from the car parks and a long-standing habit of handing out warm cookies when the lifts close. The car-free plaza is safe to let older children roam.

Summer brings a hilltop adventure area with ropes courses, climbing, mini golf and gentle hikes. What it lacks is everything a city offers on a bad-weather day: no zoo, aquarium or children's museum. Altitude can tire small children at first, and long cold days make babies hard work.

Within the resort, getting around is easy. The village core is pedestrian, outdoor escalators link the levels, many lodgings are ski-in ski-out, and free shuttles run between the village, the lodges on the hillside and the base area at Avon. Valley buses connect to Vail and down-valley towns.

Beyond that, the American West takes over. The nearest airport is at Eagle, about half an hour away, and Denver is around two hours by road over mountain passes that winter storms can close. Day trips and supermarket runs are much simpler with a car, and winter driving needs care.

Shopping is a small cluster of upmarket stores around the village plaza: technical ski wear and luxury outerwear, western-style boots and leather, jewellery and several art galleries selling bronze sculpture and landscape painting. It is pleasant to browse on a rest day, but the range is narrow and the prices are high. For outlets and everyday shops, visitors go down the valley to Avon and Edwards.

Beaver Creek is one of the most expensive places to take a vacation in North America. Slopeside lodging is mostly luxury hotels and large condos, lift tickets, equipment rental and ski school are expensive, and mountain dining is priced for the clientele. Staying down the valley in Avon or Edwards and buying lift passes well in advance help a little, and summer is noticeably cheaper than the ski season, but there is no way to do it on a budget.

The village has its own intimate theatre, the Vilar Performing Arts Center, with a season of touring concerts, comedy, dance and family shows that runs through winter and summer. Summer is the high point of the valley's calendar. The Bravo! Vail music festival brings leading American orchestras and chamber musicians to the open-air amphitheatre in Vail, about twenty minutes away, and the Vail Dance Festival and a summer jazz series fill other evenings. Outside those weeks the offer is modest, and there is no regular theatre company or opera.

Wellness here comes from the big resort spas, which are some of the largest in the Rockies, with steam rooms, outdoor hot tubs among the snow and treatments for tired ski legs. The pace of the village helps too: car-free, quiet in the evenings and built for relaxed comfort rather than crowds.

There is no bathing culture of its own, but the mineral hot springs of Glenwood Springs are about an hour west, including a huge outdoor pool that has drawn bathers since the 1880s. A slow day of spa, hot springs and a short snowshoe walk is easy to arrange.