Best ski resorts in the Colorado Rockies

Breckenridge is the highest skiing town in the United States, with a base village above 2 900 m and a lift, the Imperial Express, that drops you at 3 914 m. The Victorian Main Street looks much the same as it did when gold ran out in the 1880s, and the bar scene is louder and younger than anywhere else in Summit County.

Vail is the Epic Pass flagship and the kind of mountain that quietly explains why Colorado became Colorado. A Bavarian-style village at the foot, immaculate Front Side groomers above, and behind the ridge, seven legendary Back Bowls of open powder that have hooked skiers for sixty years.

Steamboat is where cowboys and skiers share the same bar, and where the fabled Champagne Powder falls light and dry on aspen glades. In this ranching corner of northwest Colorado, the gondola climbs straight out of Gondola Square and the night-skiing tradition still burns bright at Howelsen Hill.

Sixteen kilometres west of Vail, Beaver Creek is what happens when a 1980s developer is told to build the most polished ski village in America and given a quiet valley to do it. A gated, car-free hamlet, escalators between hotels, freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies handed out at three in the afternoon, and one of the best children's ski schools in the world.

Aspen Snowmass is really four mountains on one ticket, wrapped around a former silver-mining town that became old-money playground and creative hub at once. Ajax rises straight out of downtown, Highlands hides a bowl that hikers chase all winter, Buttermilk hosts the X Games, and Snowmass quietly delivers the biggest terrain of the four.

Telluride sits at the head of a box canyon in the San Juan Mountains, ringed by 4 000 m peaks that come right down to the edge of town. The remoteness keeps the day-tripper crowds away. The setting is the most dramatic in American skiing, and the historic Main Street is connected to the modern Mountain Village above by the only free public gondola in the country.