Buttermilk

Aspen was a silver-mining boomtown of 1880s opera houses and grand hotels before the crash of 1893 nearly emptied it — then skiing arrived after World War II, when 10th Mountain Division veterans returned to the valleys they'd trained in. Aspen Mountain opened in 1946 with what was then the world's longest chairlift, and the town reinvented itself as America's definitive ski resort: equal parts athletic, intellectual and glamorous, home to the Aspen Institute and a music festival as famous as its moguls.

The skiing spreads across four distinct mountains on one pass. Aspen Mountain (Ajax) rises straight from downtown with relentless expert terrain and zero green runs; Aspen Highlands is the connoisseur's hill, crowned by the hike-to Highland Bowl at 12,392 ft; Buttermilk is the gentle learning mountain that doubles, improbably, as the permanent home of the Winter X Games; and Snowmass is the giant, with more than 4,400 ft of vertical and terrain for every human alive.

Après ranges from champagne on sun decks to dive-bar shot-and-beer — often on the same block. No American resort mixes high and low culture with such confidence.