The Snow Towns

Every ski resort has snow. The snow towns have something better, which is a life that the winter organizes rather than interrupts, real streets under the drifts, fires that have been burning in the same hearths for a century, and a local calendar that treats the first storm as an opening night. The skiing in these places is often excellent and never quite the point. The point is the town, in its element, doing what it was built for.

The snow town rewards a different visitor than the ski resort does. The days still start on the mountain for those who want them to, but the afternoons belong to the bookshops and the bakeries, the evenings to the long dinners, and the whole trip to the particular quiet that arrives with deep snow. Non-skiers prosper in these towns, which is the surest test of the category, and the regulars often ski less every year and return anyway.

This edition goes to the winter addresses of the East and the Southwest. Stowe in the deep season, when the village and the mountain road are at their most essential, Lake Placid, which keeps more winter per block than anywhere in the East, and Taos, where the snow falls on adobe and the high desert light makes January look like a painting, reached by the old high road through the mountain villages, which this edition drives properly.

Go in the deep months, January through early March, when the snow is reliable and the holiday crowds have gone home. Book the fireside tables and the storied inns ahead, pack for weather rather than fashion, and plan at least one day with no lift ticket and no agenda. The snow towns save their best hours for the unhurried, and they always have.