Catamount, Windham, Hunter: the ski towns, ranked for the weekend owner

Catamount — the mountain in the back yard

Catamount straddles the state line at Hillsdale, about two and a half hours from the city by the resort's own reckoning, and it is the one mountain in this list that sits inside the 45-minute core of the territory. From Copake Lake it is roughly ten miles; from Hillsdale, four. It is not the tallest hill in the Northeast and does not pretend to be. What it offers a weekend owner is proximity without a resort economy: you ski in the morning and are back on the lake, or in Hudson, by lunch. In summer it runs what it describes as North America's longest dual zipline and an aerial park, which matters if the house is also for children.

The houses near it are the houses of Hillsdale, Copake and Craryville — lake cottages, farmhouses, land — served by Taconic Hills schools, the Roeliff Jansen library and Columbia Memorial Health in Hudson. The point is that the mountain is an amenity to the house, not the reason for it.

Windham — the club

Windham Mountain Club has repositioned itself as a year-round resort and members' club, with day tickets still sold to the public. Sixty trails, twelve lifts, and a village that has grown a restaurant scene around it. It is the choice for an owner who wants skiing to be the centre of the winter and a club to be part of, and the houses reflect that: closer to the lifts, newer, priced accordingly. From Copake Lake it is a genuine drive — the property-care promise here is two hours on site, not forty-five minutes — so think of Windham as its own base, not an outpost of the lake.

Hunter — the big resort

Hunter Mountain is a Vail Resorts mountain on the Epic Pass, with sixteen hundred feet of vertical and the snowmaking to match, two and a half hours from Manhattan. It is the largest and busiest of the four and the one most visibly aimed at the city. Hunter and the neighbouring village of Tannersville suit an owner who wants the full resort weekend and is prepared for the crowds that come with it; the trade is that the quieter fifty weekends can feel like a resort town out of season. Belleayre, the state-run mountain to the south-west, is the quieter alternative for anyone based around Phoenicia.

Choose by the other fifty weekends

A ski house is used for skiing perhaps twelve weekends a year. It is used for everything else the rest of the time — which is why the practical facts in the community guides matter more than the trail map: which school district, how far the hospital is, who plows, how long the drive really takes in freezing rain. Catamount wins for the owner who wants a lake life with skiing attached. Windham and Hunter win for the owner who wants a mountain life with everything else attached. Neither is wrong. The mistake is buying a house for the twelve weekends.