The best ski towns to visit in summer (they’re worth it year-round)

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Minus the white stuff and temperatures that hurt your face, you’re left with the same charm, a fraction of the crowds, and a calm vibe that’s totally underrated.
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Here’s a fun fact about me you didn’t ask for but I’m giving you anyway. I’ve lived in Vermont for almost 25 years and have never skied or snowboarded. Not once. Everything I know about ski towns, I’ve learned when dipping into them in the off-season–and frankly, that’s just the way I like it.
Minus the white stuff and temperatures that hurt your face, you’re left with the same charm, a fraction of the crowds, and a calm vibe that’s totally underrated. The ski resort infrastructure—gondolas, trails, kids’ programming, good restaurants—doesn’t disappear when the snow melts. It just gets a lot more accessible.
Mountain towns in summer run 10 to 20 degrees cooler than the valleys and cities below them, which, depending on where you live, might be the single most compelling argument for a family trip right now. Add in the wildflowers, the hiking, the alpine slides, the music festivals, and the fact that you can actually get a dinner reservation, and it starts to feel less like a workaround and more like the obvious choice. They’re also a real win if the beach just isn’t your family’s jam and some pair perfectly with a national park excursion as well.
Plan your vacation to one of the best ski towns in summer and experience all the “off season” has to offer.
1. Stowe, Vermont

I admit to being partial, but Stowe is the quaintest little gem. Vermont’s highest peak, Mount Mansfield, sits right behind town and has trails for every ability level—from a gentle nature walk with a four-year-old to a ridge scramble that will actually tire out your teenager. The Stowe Recreation Path winds 5.5 miles along the river, flat enough for bikes and strollers, and the whole scene is very much “Vermont postcard” without feeling precious about it.
The village itself is small but well-stocked. There’s good coffee, a farmers market on Sundays, and more than a few places to get your maple creemee fix. (That’s soft serve ice cream, to the uninitiated.) If you want a quieter version of the usual East Coast summer trip, this is it.
✨ Best for: Families who want outdoor activity without the logistics of a big destination
2. Steamboat Springs, Colorado

Steamboat’s nickname is Ski Town USA, which undersells how much it has going on when the lifts aren’t running. The Yampa River runs right through the middle of town, and tubing it is exactly as laid-back and fun as it sounds. (A real, actual river is a bazillion times better than the artificial lazy river experience, hands-down.) If you’ve never gone tubing, be sure to hit up an outfitter like Backdoor Sports to help you out with gear and protocol to ensure a safe and fun excursion. Fish Creek Falls is an easy family hike with a serious payoff—a 280-foot waterfall about a mile and a half in. The gondola still runs in summer and takes you to 10,500 feet, which is a good way to remind kids (and yourself) that you’re somewhere genuinely extraordinary.
The Howler Alpine Slide is a hit among kids who are past the “wow, a tree” phase. And Strawberry Park Hot Springs, a short drive from town, feels like a local secret even though it isn’t anymore.
✨ Best for: Families with a range of ages; easy to keep everyone occupied
3. Telluride, Colorado

Telluride sits at the bottom of a box canyon and looks like it was designed by someone who wanted to make you feel small in the best possible way. The free gondola—the only free public transportation system of its kind in the country—links the historic downtown to Mountain Village in about 12 minutes and is worth riding just for the views.
Summer is festival season here, and Telluride has practically become synonymous with the phrase. Whether you’re into bluegrass, jazz, film, blues or brews, there’s something that will appeal. (The balloon festival is particularly awesome.) If your trip overlaps with any of them, great. If it doesn’t, the hiking, climbing, and biking stand on their own. Bridal Veil Falls, the tallest free-falling waterfall in Colorado, is accessible on foot and dramatic enough that kids who claim to be bored by “just hiking” tend to come around.
Getting to Telluride takes some effort—it’s remote even by Colorado standards—but that’s also what keeps it from feeling overrun.
✨ Best for: Families who want the full mountain town experience, festivals included
4. Park City, Utah

Park City is the most logistically easy entry on this list—it’s 45 minutes from Salt Lake City’s airport, which matters when you’re traveling with kids and gear. The resort keeps things moving in summer with an alpine slide, mountain coaster, scenic lift rides, mountain biking, and disc golf. Epic Pass holders get a discount on most of it, which is worth knowing if you already ski here in winter.
The historic Main Street has the right mix of good restaurants and browsable shops without tipping into the territory where everything is expensive and nothing is for kids. (Though there are a few which are laughably pricey, which makes for their own entertainment, IMO. And definitely pop into Dolly’s Bookstore.) The midweek farmers market is a nice slow morning if you’re there for a few days. Deer Valley’s outdoor concert series runs through the summer and is one of the better excuses to get a babysitter.
✨ Best for: Families who want convenience and solid infrastructure without sacrificing scenery
5. Crested Butte, Colorado

Crested Butte is the one on this list that most people haven’t planned a trip around yet, which is its biggest selling point. It’s known as the wildflower capital of Colorado, and if you drop in in July when the meadows around town are popping off, you’ll see that the reputation is well-earned. The Wildflower Festival in mid-July draws botanists, hikers, and photographers, but the blooms don’t necessarily wait for the festival.
The historic downtown has the colorful Victorian buildings and the indie-shop energy that bigger mountain towns have mostly lost to national retailers. It’s quieter, cheaper, and less polished than Telluride or Aspen, which depending on your preferences is either a selling point or the whole point.
✨ Best for: Families who want to feel like they found something; wildflower hiking
6. Sun Valley, Idaho

Sun Valley was America’s first destination ski resort and has been quietly crushing the summer season for decades. The biking infrastructure here is serious with 400 miles of singletrack plus 30 miles of paved trails and the fly fishing draws people who plan entire trips around it. For families who want a slower pace, horseback riding and golf are both well-established here.
And if your kids are still riding the high of Alysa Liu’s knockout performance in Milan, Sun Valley has an outdoor ice skating rink open in summer, and the Sun Valley Ice Show has featured world-class figure skaters for more than 80 years. Watching Olympic-caliber skating in July, outside, in Idaho, is the kind of absurd and genuinely delightful thing that makes a trip memorable.
✨ Best for: Active families with older kids; anyone still obsessing over the ice skating in the winter Olympics
7. Big Sky, Montana

Big Sky’s obvious card to play in summer is Yellowstone, which is about an hour away and worth planning a full day around. But Big Sky itself offers enough to fill several days before you even get there: horseback riding in the wide-open Gallatin Valley, fly fishing on the Gallatin River, whitewater rafting, ziplining, and a town center that runs farmers markets and art shows through the summer.
The scale of the landscape here is different from Colorado’s more concentrated mountain towns. It’s bigger, more spread out, and gives the whole trip a slightly more epic quality—which either appeals to you or it doesn’t.
✨ Best for: Families combining a mountain town with a national park trip
8. Whitefish, Montana

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Whitefish doesn’t get the same attention as the Colorado towns, which means you can still rent a place on the lake for something approaching a reasonable price. Whitefish Lake is the center of summer here—swimming, kayaking, paddleboarding—and the town itself has the kind of main street that rewards an afternoon of wandering without a plan.
The larger draw is Glacier National Park, about 30 minutes away. Glacier is one of those places that’s hard to oversell: it’s genuinely wild and visually overwhelming in a way that’s rare in the Lower 48. The Going-to-the-Sun Road is one of the great scenic drives, and unlike some national parks, Glacier still has enough “we found a quiet spot” moments to justify the drive.
Book early—Glacier requires timed entry permits for the most popular areas, and they go fast.
✨ Best for: Lake-focused families who also want serious national park access
A few things worth knowing before you go
Mountain summer temperatures can swing dramatically—warm and sunny by noon, cold and stormy by 4pm. Pack layers regardless of the forecast, and build flexibility into afternoon plans. Most of these towns sit above 6,000 feet, so if you’re coming from sea level, give everyone a day to adjust before you attempt anything ambitious.
Summer is the shoulder season at ski resorts, which generally means lower accommodation prices than peak winter. That said, popular towns like Telluride and Park City tend to stay on the pricier side year round. If you’re looking to cut costs, midweek travel does still pay off in most of these destinations.
And for what it’s worth: the gondola rides are free or cheap, the wildflowers don’t cost anything, and an afternoon on a mountain with your family—actually cool enough to need a sweatshirt in July—turns out to be an underrated thing.

















































































