Wintersports USA: Where to go?

[ssandra]

Hi guys,

We're deciding on a place to go on holiday this January. Any suggestions?

Requirements:

- Snow
- "cute" village or city, where you can walk around and be all romantic and sticky together

We're going with at least 2 families, one of who has a small child (4 years old).

We'd like to sky a little as well. None of us are experts, so if we can just try out a little, that is enough. No super duber sky pistes needed...

So far 2 possible options I have are Boulder, Colorado (I've been there once and fell in love right away) or Lake Tahoe (I don't know where though. Never been there?)

[Clint Cora]

I would strongly suggest that you check out Whistler and Banff. Whister was the site of the last winter Olympics and you will also love the city of Vancouver. Banff is great too since it's a small, quaint town with wildlife on the roads as well as three major ski resorts to have fun at. Of course, being Canadian, I'm a bit biased but if you do your online research, you will see that Whistler is actually the most visited winter resort in North America and Banff is also world class.

[SnerpGoodWord]

For skiing (which I think is what you meant by "sky") I would recommend one of the Colorado resorts. Personally I really like Winter Park, but it's not the best on the cute village front. For that Aspen and Vail are great, but expensive.

Boulder is very nice, but there's about a 70% chance of no snow on the ground on any given day in January. You'd have to go up into the mountains to be guaranteed snow. Staying in boulder, visiting Rocky Mountain national park for snow, and skiing at Eldora would be a good and less expensive option.

Knowing something about your price range and how you intend to get there would help.

[ssandra]

Skiing... sorry!

Price range; Not too expensive, Aspen would be too much. But neither are we on a budget.

We intend to fly there from Mexico City. Renting a car is an option, although not a prefered one. It would be better if we could walk everything.

[SnerpGoodWord]

Originally Posted by ssandra

Skiing... sorry!

Price range; Not too expensive, Aspen would be too much. But neither are we on a budget.

We intend to fly there from Mexico City. Renting a car is an option, although not a prefered one. It would be better if we could walk everything.

So the main airport is Denver (DIA) which is at least an hour and a half from anywhere you might want to be - and 4 hours from the eastern slope. I'm sure there's shuttles and stuff, or if you're going to do a connection in the states you could fly into Eagle County or Aspen airport and be a lot closer.

One thought would be Snowmass. It's sort of Aspen-lite: cheaper, but nearby and you can get shuttle service into Aspen for shopping/walking etc. There's a couple of hotels there I like, although names escape me at the moment.

One nice thing about Snowmass is that you're near the Glenwood hotsprings, which is the best post-skiing relaxation in the world and one of my favorite places. You probably would want a car to make that work although there might be some sort of public transit I don't know about.

Edit: The Silvertree was the hotel I liked in Snowmass.