Good colleges for skiing, climbing, and mountain town atmosphere

Gunnison is awesome, as is the Crested Butte.

Climbing is the main priority as far as fun goes, and a good education and wrestling obviously. Wrestlers arnt allowed to ski during the season, so it will mostly be ice and rock

Colorado Mountain College

www.coloradomtn.edu

Campuses all over the state, ie easy to get to skiing and climbing.

you should really look at flagstaff again. it's not at all like you think it is

AKfrankie wrote:Climbing is the main priority as far as fun goes, and a good education and wrestling obviously. Wrestlers arnt allowed to ski during the season, so it will mostly be ice and rock

Well, if you can't ski, living in Gunnison, aka the coldest place in the state, will suck during the winter. You can climb outdoors and mtn bike most of the year on the front range and the western slope, aka Golden or Grand J (Durango too). I know a few people who went to school in Bozeman, they loved it, but all live back here now. There are reasons most who grew up in Colorado never leave or come back.

This is probably going to get a ton of hate, but I'm going to put in a plug for the University of Utah or BYU.

If you live in either Salt Lake or Provo, there is climbing and skiing both 15 minutes away. If you're in Salt Lake you can get Little Cotton Wood's endless trad goodness. If Sport is more your thing, then you've got the massively developed Big Cottonwood right next to Little. American Fork is 45 minutes away with more hard sport climbing than you could ever send. Rock Canyon is less than a ten min drive from Provo and really deserves the ultimate local area award with a HUGE assortment of trad, sport, 3 different rock types, and the second longest sport climb in America. Joe's Valley is about 3-4 hrs from Salt lake and makes a really fun day trip. For weekends you can head down to the incomparable Fisher Towers in Moab or even the crack mecca of Indian creek. For spring break you could even make a pilgrimage to Yosemitie as its only about 9-10 hrs away.

Salt Lake's got more ski resorts than any normal college student can afford to go to, and Provo's got Sundance which is less than 20 minutes from BYU.

Moab is the mountain biking capitol of the world, and that is a weekend trip from both of the colleges, but there is also an endless supply of mountain biking trails in the ski resorts during the spring and summer.

I don't know about the school's wrestling teams, and I don't know how you feel about living with mormons, but if you're looking for outdoor life, I don't think there are a lot of places that can compete with Salt Lake valley.

Boise St. is a great wrestling school, Boise is probably one of the more underrated cities in the nation. There are three climbing areas under 45 mins, all with different rock. Closest is 15 mins, and has hundreds of trad and sport routes from 5.5 to 5.14d. Skiing is 45 mins away and the area is as big as Breck with about 1% of the people.
No close ice, but a great trail system that you don't even need to drive to if you live in the N. End. Definitely worth checking out before you decide.

I'd also recccomend Durango and SLC. Durango's a cool town in a cool place, and SLC is in an awesome place...
MT is awesome too

steven joseph wrote:colorado springs or boulder for sure hands down... grand junction is like suicide in a cup... nothing to do 500 miles west and just about the same east except vail and stuff which is about 3 hours away... boulder is epic and colorado springs is epic

Hate on the town all you want, it sucks. But the location? Really? You see an awful lot of CO plates in Moab/IC in the fall and I'm certain they aren't all western slope climbers...I can get to Castle Valley or Rifle from my door in just over an hour, the Black or Ouray in less than two, not to mention a bunch of smaller, uncrowded areas in between. And for access to the i-70 resorts, its actually quite nice and an easy drive considering traffic is always going opposite the way you are.

steven joseph wrote:colorado springs or boulder for sure hands down... grand junction is like suicide in a cup... nothing to do 500 miles west and just about the same east except vail and stuff which is about 3 hours away... boulder is epic and colorado springs is epic

Clearly a smoke screen.

Are you considering the quality of the academics at all? some of the schools you mention are not top tier academically.
Golden -- would that be School of Mines? If so, it's a great school and close to everything.
Palo Alto- Stanford? If you're accepted, they give a full ride to all students whose parent earn less than 100K. Long drive to climbing.

If you're qualified for School of Mines -assuming this is why you listed Golden- I don't see why there is any debate. Unless you don't think you can cut it there, which is a valid concern. But if you don't feel up to the challenge, go ahead and get a BA in Liberal Arts from one of the other Stoner colleges everyone has suggested. We don't have enough of those running around not knowing how to work and waiting to get their student loans bailed out.