Searching for the perfect ski town. (Durango, Aspen: prices, swimming pool, rich)

[Snort]

Durango, Telluride, or Breckenridge.

[notoriouskelly]

Love what sunsprit & jazz lover said - you're not going to find all that in a resort town.

I was lucky I went to Summit County when first arriving in Colorado - had enough in 6 months to be content living in front range and driving to the mountains to play.

Everything I want during the week, and also much weekend stuff, is in the city.

I'd drive up early and have breakfast in Frisco then be at the lift when they opened. By the time the traffic crunch from Denver is jammed up Westbound I-70, I was on my way home Eastbound with no traffic.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by mikeymikes

We have vacationed in Vail and Aspen both the winter and summer and enjoy visiting those resort towns but we never pictured ourselves becoming part of those communities. Vail just doesn't have that town feel, the mountain is over run with South Americans and not a fan of living right on the highway. Aspen is simply to flashy. I put up with enough of the Aspen types here in Palm Beach.

We enjoyed Crested Butte last winter and haven't ruled it out but there are still a lot of places we haven't yet visited and need some help making a short list of spots we should see before making a decision.

things that are important to us in no specific order:

1. Great skiing (allows snowboarding)
2. An authentic downtown and sense of community
3. Good restaurants
4. Good schools
5. Good fishing nearby

If anyone has any advice or has a second home out west I'd be interested to hear from you.

While we have only visited and skied in Colorado we are loving what we have read about Jackson, WY / Sun Valley, ID / Park City, UT / Telluride, CO.

Vail actually has a very nice community of locals including the folks down valley, but as a pass through town tourist you will not see that because mostly you are interacting with the ski mountain with the rest of the tourists. Aspen certainly is more extreme.

The issue is that any real ski town that has "great skiing" and "good restaurants" is going to have the tourism infrastructure and hence many tourists necessary to support that "great skiing" and "good restaurants". So no downtown is going to be "authentic" or normal, even Steamboat or Jackson. These are all tourist towns and act like it with transient people, 2nd home owners like yourself, scads of tourists and other strange folks.

Having worked for many 2nd home owners for 7 years in Vail and Aspen, I don't recommend it to many people. There is maintenance and upkeep on a home in a high elevation winter climate, taxes, fees, security and the costs of visiting because to make your 2nd home worthwhile that means it's about the only place you will ever vacation again. In many cases these 2nd homes end up as boat anchors around the owners neck whether they are an average joe that owns a condo or a multi millionaire that has a large house.

If you don't plan on using it several months out of the year or just plain have an excess of money to burn, rent what you need when you need it. Plenty of these large homes are available for rent at sometimes surprisingly reasonable rates.

I don't know Sun Valley. Park City is even more commercial, touristy and bursting at the seams with 2nd home owners and tourists than any Colorado ski town. Jackson is heavily commercialized, but distant, isolated and cold. Telluride is even more weird than Aspen and sits in a isolated box canyon.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by delta07

You might also consider places out in the Pacific Northwest. We have much of what you desire here in Bend, OR (although I say this grudgingly, as we are becoming less and less of a "real" town).

I visited Bend last year for the first time to see what big whoop was, since it is often talked up. Yes I'd say it's a "real" town no doubt about it, but certainly oriented to the tourist and the 2nd home crowd. I thought it was an OK place but not a town I'd race back to.

And that is the Catch 22. A lot of these people out there want an authentic town with a community feel, but yet they want the tourist attractions and to support those attractions, you need tourists and outsiders all piling in by the bus load to make all that financially viable. Same with 2nd home owners. They want all the amenities but then once the town in question fills up with so many transient 2nd home owners, then what happens to the "authentic" feel and community? Once it reaches a certain point of saturation these folks kill the original spirit of the place and kill the goose that laid the original egg.

I don't bemoan it for happening because everything always changes and we should always expect that.

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by wanneroo

And that is the Catch 22. A lot of these people out there want an authentic town with a community feel, but yet they want the tourist attractions and to support those attractions, you need tourists and outsiders all piling in by the bus load to make all that financially viable. Same with 2nd home owners. They want all the amenities but then once the town in question fills up with so many transient 2nd home owners, then what happens to the "authentic" feel and community? Once it reaches a certain point of saturation these folks kill the original spirit of the place and kill the goose that laid the original egg.

As Yogi Berra said, "The joint got so popular that nobody went there anymore." Or, as I put it, if someplace has been featured in a national magazine, it's probably already been wrecked.

I suppost that, in a mega-resort town, the affluent part-time residents can hob-knob with each other and find some sense of "community," no matter how abnormal that social demographic is. In the smaller resort towns, though, quite often the affluent part-timers are, at best, tolerated by the full-time residents, if not outright disliked for what those part-timers do to the sociological health of the community. Sure, the full-time locals may make superficially nice to the part-timers because they can make some money catering to them, but, under that facade, the locals very often really don't like the affluent part-timers and wish that they weren't around. A friend who lives in one of those smaller towns commented, even more bluntly than I would, "This town is 100% better when those rich part-time b*****ds leave for the season." By the way, this guy is a successful businessperson and is by no means poor, but he detests the affluent part-time jerks throwing their weight around in the community.

[otterprods]

I second the idea of Buena Vista. Salida would also be a good candidate. They're still relatively un-pretentious as high country towns go because there are no ski resorts in the their immediate vicinity, although you can drive no more than 1/2 to get to Monarch from either of them. They're both on the Arkansas... a real win for fishers and paddlers. And they're very close to some beautiful 14ers and other mountain goodness. Gunnison is another possibility and there are many, many others, depending on what you really need.

Whatever you choose, the key will be choosing a place that's not right a the base of a ski mountain, but still close enough for your liking. If you have enough cash to be in a position to even consider a second home just for play, why don't you just start coming out each year and renting for a while until you find whatever area is really best for you? Second homes usually aren't that good of an investment anyways, sexy as they may seem. Later on if/when you find a place that you love so much that you want to spend a whole lot of time each year, a second home might make sense long term if you can truly afford the overhead (which there will be plenty of no matter how much you think the market value may climb).

Oh and here's another hint: If an 'authentic feel' is really important, you're not going to find it in ANY place you've ever read about in a high-profile magazine, seen on TV, or heard a buzz about from other tourists. These days, true authenticity is relegated to places that few people think of as 'cool' and which are far from 'perfect'.

[coloradoalimony]

Moab has absolutely awesome skiing just a few miles outside of town, and is a pretty good town itself.

Oh, you want chairlifts? Never mind.

[delta07]

Originally Posted by wanneroo

I visited Bend last year for the first time to see what big whoop was, since it is often talked up. Yes I'd say it's a "real" town no doubt about it, but certainly oriented to the tourist and the 2nd home crowd. I thought it was an OK place but not a town I'd race back to.

And that is the Catch 22. A lot of these people out there want an authentic town with a community feel, but yet they want the tourist attractions and to support those attractions, you need tourists and outsiders all piling in by the bus load to make all that financially viable. Same with 2nd home owners. They want all the amenities but then once the town in question fills up with so many transient 2nd home owners, then what happens to the "authentic" feel and community? Once it reaches a certain point of saturation these folks kill the original spirit of the place and kill the goose that laid the original egg.

I don't bemoan it for happening because everything always changes and we should always expect that.

Exactly! It's hard because most of these mountain towns just wouldn't exist without the tourism industry. I know we in Bend were hit very hard with the recession.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by otterprods

I second the idea of Buena Vista. Salida would also be a good candidate. They're still relatively un-pretentious as high country towns go because there are no ski resorts in the their immediate vicinity, although you can drive no more than 1/2 to get to Monarch from either of them. They're both on the Arkansas... a real win for fishers and paddlers. And they're very close to some beautiful 14ers and other mountain goodness. Gunnison is another possibility and there are many, many others, depending on what you really need.

Whatever you choose, the key will be choosing a place that's not right a the base of a ski mountain, but still close enough for your liking. If you have enough cash to be in a position to even consider a second home just for play, why don't you just start coming out each year and renting for a while until you find whatever area is really best for you? Second homes usually aren't that good of an investment anyways, sexy as they may seem. Later on if/when you find a place that you love so much that you want to spend a whole lot of time each year, a second home might make sense long term if you can truly afford the overhead (which there will be plenty of no matter how much you think the market value may climb).

Oh and here's another hint: If an 'authentic feel' is really important, you're not going to find it in ANY place you've ever read about in a high-profile magazine, seen on TV, or heard a buzz about from other tourists. These days, true authenticity is relegated to places that few people think of as 'cool' and which are far from 'perfect'.

There is an excess of second home real estate in the entire mountain area of Colorado, so finding rental deals is very easy and allows one to experience the place before making a massive commitment to it. If you buy a property it can be tough to sell as everyone wants their own dream, not someone else's, so if you do buy and then don't like the local area it might be tough to extract yourself from it.

I would agree that one would find a better chance of an "authentic" town being away from the ski areas but within reach of one.

[Danbo1957]

Rule: live one town away from the resort town. My vote, Gunnison.