RollTide_Houston

My wife and I have been going to rocky mountain towns in the summer now for about 7 years. Telluride (also love Breckenridge) is our favorite for obvious reasons but the wife is making me choose somewhere different now. My real question involves two important factors to us, weather and crowds. I am a bit OCD about the weather in these mountain towns as we live in Houston and deal with awful heat the entire summer. I go to a mountain town to experience cool weather and since we are used to year round AC, going to a mountain town where there is no s A/C and they have frequent "heat waves" is not ideal. This is why we love Telluride and Beck, because they do not often get heat waves. We are strongly considering Jackson Hole, Park City, and Aspen this June 14th-19th but I am on the fence with the weather and crowds, can anyone weigh in on these three? Looking at Park City historical weather it looks like they have alot of 80+ days in mid-June, which isnt my thing, but it could be wrong. I looked up historical weather for Park City and possibly it was incorrect but it seems they have had some pretty bad heat waves in June. Any suggestions are welcome, thanks ahead of time!

PrairieHikerII

I don't know anything about Park City but Aspen is a fun town (if you can afford it). You can rent bikes and bike along the river. Crested Butte would be cool and it is one of the mt. biking capitals and wildflower capitals of the US.

tomfuller

I would only go to Jackson Hole WY if I planned on going to see Yellowstone and Grand Teton. How do you plan on getting to a mountain town in Colorado? If it involves flying and a rental car, you could fly to Denver and take the light rail into town and rent there or you could take the California Zephyr from Denver to Glenwood Springs. There is a good bus service from Glenwood Springs up to Aspen (41 miles).
Glenwood Springs is home to the worlds largest hot spring fed swimming pool and several other attractions. The train trip from Denver is all in daylight and the Glenwood Canyon east of town is one of the best scenery areas that Amtrak trains go through.

RollTide_Houston

We have visited Crested Butte in the summer. We liked it alot, but it was a bit small with not much to do, and in our opinion not as pretty as Telluride. Again, our main question pertains to weather as we like cooler days in the 60s and 70s.

Melnq8

Regarding the weather in Aspen - not sure if this helps, but we live at 8,500 feet in Colorado and don't have or need AC. Aspen is at 8,000 feet and I'd not worry too much about being hot up there either. Yes, days can get warm, but nights cool off - which is the wonderful part about living here.

We don't even take our down duvet off our bed until late May, sometimes early June.

And it's a dry heat! Not that humid crap you have down there.

Crowds are another story altogether.

We were in Park City and Jackson, WY late May last year and it was damn busy in both places. Uncomfortably so.

But there was still snow on the hiking trails in both Grand Teton and Park City and we had snow one day in Park City.

fmpden

The big issue is elevation. Park City is a couple thousand feet lower than Breck or most of Colorado. Remember Park City is in relation to Salt Lake City. That is why it is hotter. Our experience with Jackson Hole is that it is similar to CO in the summer. It will be a little cooler because it is further north.