Moving from SLC to Golden CO?..help

Long story short: My wife and I live just south of SLC. We are not from Utah. We both just got jobs in Golden, CO. I am really on the fence on this one. Please help. My thought process is below, someone set me strait. It would be great if I could hear from someone who is well acquainted with both areas. 

SLC:  

Pros: -Amazing access to mountains in all seasons (as in I just got back from skiing after work), and I regularly climb or scramble up to 11,000 after work in the fall and summer. 

          -Cheaper

          -Centrally located to Red Rocks, Moab, Zion, Tetons, City of Rocks...

Cons: - LDS culture

            -The air quality

Golden:

Pros: - Better culture

          -Still some access to mountains

Cons: - way too many people

           -Harder to get to great climbing, skiing

We climb rock and ice. We ski Snowbird and tour a lot. We trail run and hike a lot. So is Golden that great or isn't it? In the summer we are usually in the PNW so I am not so concerned with that season. 

Getoutside wrote:

Long story short: My wife and I live just south of SLC. We are not from Utah. We both just got jobs in Golden, CO. I am really on the fence on this one. Please help. My thought process is below, someone set me strait. It would be great if I could hear from someone who is well acquainted with both areas. 

SLC:  

Pros: -Amazing access to mountains in all seasons (as in I just got back from skiing after work), and I regularly climb or scramble up to 11,000 after work in the fall and summer. 

          -Cheaper

          -Centrally located to Red Rocks, Moab, Zion, Tetons, City of Rocks...

Cons: -Mormons...omg the Mormons. It makes Kentucky feel liberal. 

            -The air quality

Golden:

Pros: - Better culture

          -Still some access to mountains

Cons: - way too many people

           -Harder to get to great climbing, skiing

We climb rock and ice. We ski Snowbird and tour a lot. We trail run and hike a lot. So is Golden that great or isn't it? In the summer we are usually in the PNW so I am not so concerned with that season. 

The Mormon issue isn't anywhere near as bad as you make it sound. (I moved here 17 years ago from a liberal upbringing in NJ and central CT.)

The crowds and traffic in the front range, plus the cost of living will make you cry and wonder "Why did we ever move here?".

SLC has a far more diverse and interesting restaurant scene. 

Marc801 C wrote:

The Mormon issue isn't anywhere near as bad as you make it sound. (I moved here 17 years ago from a liberal upbringing in NJ and central CT.)

Marc,  I changed my post to edit out any, well just bias I guess, that you might have picked up on. I am glad that you have not found it noticeable. We have. Over 90% of the people we work with are Mormon and we really notice it, I won't go into specifics.  

Variety is the spice of life.  I loved living and playing in Utah for 7 years.  There is a lifetime of even more climbing there, but we needed something new.  It breathed new life to move out of Utah, and gave us a huge new amount of things to explore in completely different ways.  

I can't speak to Golden, but from your post you know that you need to move.  Best of luck!

SLC is rapidly deteriorating. Best to get out before we have an all out fiscal crisis here, or the earthquake, or you need a respirator 24/7. Change is good.

You seem really happy in SLC so better off to stay there. Way better access anyway. Golden sucks.  

I lived in Fort Collins for 5 years, now I live in SLC. 

Yeah more beer and weed on the front range. I drank waaaay more in CO. Now i dont drink that much. Its fun to bike to breweries and stuff. SLC doesnt have any of that. 

Front range - Smaller touring community because of proximity.

Front range - Bigger climbing community, but that means way more noobs too. 

Just give up resort skiing. Resort skiing traffic sucks SOOOOOOOO bad in CO if you are commuting from the front range. If you want a full saturday or sunday at copper mt from Golden you better wake up at 4, be on the road at 5 am. Then if you leave the resort at 330 pm you want get back until 7 or 8. 

Wasatch pow >>> Colorado snow. Kiss the wasatch snow good bye. 

It is rare to not see people when doing outdoor stuff in CO. Just expect it. 

Denver traffic is way worse than SLC. I-70 and I-25 are the shittiest interstates ever (I have no CA experience). SLC traffic on a sunday = 0. Den traffic on a sunday = WTF. 

Front range is expensive for everything. 

Front range - annoying people who move to Colorado from the east that all hike the same trails and have the same dream of growing weed and selling hydro systems (yes there are exceptionally, extraordianarily cool people from the east, STFU)

SLC - annoying religious stigmas

Is the grass greener on the other side??? You decide. 

grog m aka Greg McKee wrote:

Yeah more beer and weed on the front range. I drank waaaay more in CO. Now i dont drink that much. Its fun to bike to breweries and stuff. SLC doesnt have any of that.

The annual Sugarhouse Pub Crawl starts in about 2:30hrs.

There are two breweries you can bike to in SLC.

What do you need help with?  You pose a question in your title but don't specify what the question is.  Help deciding?  Sounds like you have already made up your mind.  Help picking an area?  Golden will probably give you the best of your options on the Frond Range since you both will be working there.  

Golden is small and "derpy". Kind of backwater in a lot of ways still. The smell from the sanitation and coors factory sometimes wafts into town and gets kinda strong if there's an inversion. Also traffic to Denver can be kinda crap on I-70. Lastly, rent and housing prices will be a shock coming from SLC. Your money won't go far in that direction. 

I live in Boulder, about 30 minutes north of Golden. Golden is awesome, it's an outdoor adventurer's paradise. As Dirt Squirrel noted, it is small, but I think that is why people choose to live there. It's not the mecca of fancy restaurants or bangin' night life. But if you're in the mood for that, Denver is an easy 15-20 minute drive away. 

It's the beginning of the mountains. There's TONS of climbing right in Golden and you're right off the highway and can be skiing in a couple of hours tops (with traffic). There's trails upon trails upon trails. Everyone I know who lives in Golden either: runs, climbs, skis, mountain bikes, road bikes, or all of the above. Many of them on a daily basis, right from their front door. I do NOT think you would find Golden too crowded at all. Perhaps on the summer weekends you'll find lots of people visiting, but that should tell you something about how great it is. Oh, and you're right by Red Rocks. 

So basically all thumbs up for this place. Go visit, you'll see. 

Beth Curran wrote:

I live in Boulder, about 30 minutes north of Golden. Golden is awesome, it's an outdoor adventurer's paradise. As Dirt Squirrel noted, it is small, but I think that is why people choose to live there. It's not the mecca of fancy restaurants or bangin' night life. But if you're in the mood for that, Denver is an easy 15-20 minute drive away. 

It's the beginning of the mountains. There's TONS of climbing right in Golden and you're right off the highway and can be skiing in a couple of hours tops (with traffic). There's trails upon trails upon trails. Everyone I know who lives in Golden either: runs, climbs, skis, mountain bikes, road bikes, or all of the above. Many of them on a daily basis, right from their front door. I do NOT think you would find Golden too crowded at all. Perhaps on the summer weekends you'll find lots of people visiting, but that should tell you something about how great it is. Oh, and you're right by Red Rocks. 

So basically all thumbs up for this place. Go visit, you'll see. 

Says the chick who lives in Boulder

Dirt Squirrel wrote:

Golden is small and "derpy". Kind of backwater in a lot of ways still. The smell from the sanitation and coors factory sometimes wafts into town and gets kinda strong if there's an inversion. Also traffic to Denver can be kinda crap on I-70. Lastly, rent and housing prices will be a shock coming from SLC. Your money won't go far in that direction. 

x2.  I hear Aurora is nice.

Thanks for the replies. 

Decision?