Most luxurious ski resorts in the USA

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.

Park City is the largest single ski resort in the United States, a 7300-acre playground that swallows Park City Mountain and The Canyons under one pass. Historic silver-mining Main Street still curves down through the valley, the airport sits 35 minutes away, and every January Sundance comes to town.

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.

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.

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.

Deer Valley is the white-tablecloth address of the Wasatch, a ski-only resort where attendants park your skis at lunch and the dining rooms keep their linen pressed. Beneath the polish lies a surprisingly broad mountain, and the Mayflower expansion will nearly double the place by 2026.

Sun Valley invented destination skiing. Built in 1936 by the Union Pacific Railroad to fill its winter sleeper cars, this Idaho enclave was where the chairlift itself was born, where Hollywood came to learn parallel turns, and where Hemingway chose to spend his last years. Bald Mountain still rises behind Ketchum with that exact same gravity.

Stowe is where American skiing was born. White clapboard church spires, a covered bridge over the West Branch, sugar maples bleeding crimson in November, then snow draping the spruce on Mt Mansfield. The village sits 11 kilometres from the lifts, and the free shuttle makes that distance feel like part of the ritual rather than a flaw.