Winter Park, Colorado

Winter Park sits at around 2,700m in the Colorado Rockies, more than a thousand kilometres from the nearest sea. Grand Lake and the reservoirs around Granby have small shoreline areas, but the snowmelt water stays cold even in July, and people use it for boating and paddling more than swimming. If water matters, plan on a hotel pool or the hot springs pools down the valley.

Eating here is ski-town fare: burgers and green chile at slopeside lodges, pizza and barbecue on the main highway through town, a couple of craft breweries and a few more ambitious dinner rooms for steak, elk and Rocky Mountain trout. Breakfast burritos and coffee before the lifts open are a local ritual. The choice widens a little in neighbouring Fraser, but there is no regional cuisine to seek out, no market life, and on busy winter weekends tables fill early. It feeds a ski or hiking trip well enough without becoming a reason to come.

There is very little to see in the usual sense. The town grew up around a ski area opened by the city of Denver in the late 1930s, and its main heritage is the railway history of the Moffat Tunnel and the small ranch museum in Fraser that tells the valley's homesteading story. Visitors come for the mountains, and a day of museums means driving to Denver.

Going out here means après-ski: crowded bars at the base village when the lifts close, then a handful of pubs and brewery taprooms along the main road where skiers carry on into the evening. Winter weekends and spring-break weeks get loud and cheerful, but the crowd is mostly families and early risers chasing first chair, so by late evening the town is quiet. Summer evenings are calmer still. There are no clubs to speak of and nothing that keeps going into the small hours.

This is a mountain base first and last. The ski area spreads across two connected mountains, the groomed cruisers of Winter Park and the steep bumps and tree runs of Mary Jane, with summits above 3,600m and a long season that often runs well into spring. Cross-country skiers have miles of track in the valley, and snowshoe trails and backcountry slopes on Berthoud Pass lie just up the road.

In summer the same slopes become one of the country's best-known lift-served mountain bike parks, and hundreds of kilometres of singletrack thread the forests around Fraser. Hikers head for the Indian Peaks and Byers Peak, and the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park, with its moose, elk and high tundra, is about an hour north. The valley is famously cold at night, and afternoon thunderstorms shape summer hiking plans.

Over Berthoud Pass, the Victorian mining towns of Georgetown and Idaho Springs make an easy outing in about an hour, with old brick main streets and a historic narrow-gauge railway loop. North of the valley, the lakeside town of Grand Lake has a wooden boardwalk and the feel of an old summer resort, and Hot Sulphur Springs is a short drive west.

Denver, with its museums, galleries and neighbourhoods, is about an hour and a half away when the pass is clear, and Boulder a little further. The pass roads are high and winter storms can close or slow them, so day trips here depend on the weather more than on the map.

Winter Park has long been the Colorado ski area families choose, with a large children's ski school, gentle learning slopes at the base, and a compact village where everything is a short walk from the lifts. Off the slopes there is snow tubing, sleigh rides and a skating rink in winter, and in summer an alpine slide, mini golf, climbing walls and easy bike trails.

The town is small, quiet and easy to manage, and the free town shuttle saves carrying gear around. The main caution is altitude: at around 2,700m, some children and adults feel headaches and poor sleep for the first night or two, and winter cold in the valley is sharp. Rainy days offer little indoors.

Within the valley, a free shuttle bus runs between the ski base, the town centre and Fraser, and the base village itself is walkable, so a ski week can be done without driving. But lodgings are strung out along several kilometres of highway, the main street is a road rather than a strolling centre, and trailheads, Grand Lake and the national park all need a car. Reaching town from Denver means a mountain drive over Berthoud Pass, which calls for proper winter tyres in snow, or a shuttle or bus service.

Shopping is practical: ski and snowboard rental and tuning shops, bike shops, outdoor clothing and a few gift and souvenir stores in the base village and along the main road. It is useful for gear you forgot, but nobody comes to shop, and anything more means a trip to Denver.

A winter stay is expensive. Lift tickets, ski rentals, lessons and slopeside lodging all carry high Colorado resort prices, and restaurant meals are priced like a resort, with little cheap everyday eating to fall back on. It is still a more affordable choice than the state's glamour resorts. Condos and motels in Fraser cost less than the base village, and kitchens let families cut the food bill. Summer is much easier on the budget, when hiking and the trails are free and lodging rates drop.

In summer the town park hosts free outdoor concerts and the occasional music festival, which are pleasant evenings on the grass with the mountains behind. Outside those months, live music is mostly a band in an après-ski bar. There is no theatre, concert hall or regular programme, so anyone after performances should plan an evening in Denver.

Rest here comes from the setting: cold, clean air, quiet forest and evenings in a hot tub after a day outside, which most condos and lodges provide. A handful of spas in the resort and at a guest ranch outside the valley offer massage and treatments for sore legs. The real bathing option is Hot Sulphur Springs, about half an hour west, where mineral pools of different temperatures step down a hillside above the Colorado River. In ski season the base village is busy and the days are active, so the slower weeks of late spring and autumn suit unwinding best.