righttt..... cause you've lived in reno. I don't even understand how you can not appreciate a 24 hour city and the cheap booze and fun it brings. You can walk downtown and party your socks off. You can float a river in the summer that takes your directly to downtown. Have you no appreciation for the immense opportunities of fun to be had in reno, all at a fraction of the price of any other cit??? Hell, you can walk from the school to DT, no excuse to ever get a DUI and there are no curfews. This trashiness you refer too, not as prevalent as you would assume.
And in retaliation, SLC has the worst air quality in the U.S. during winters when inversions set in. You want to talk about dirty, at least reno doesn't inject your lungs with toxic carcinogens. All that said, I still love SLC and I've spent a lot of time there throug out my life.
In terms of skiing, well it's Tahoe, so you can do the homework there. Shouldn't be too difficult.
As a general comparison. Tahoe has the warmer weather and plentiful sunshine. SLC (the Wasatch) has far better snow, but that snow is the result of consistently colder weather. Could expand on the this basic comparison, but logical reasoning will walk you through the details.
U of U and UNR, as mentioned by many, are probably your two best bets for "full-sized" university with plentiful ski options all within 30 minutes to an hour. There are others, like montana, but I provide not insight there. As a general warning, any major school in CO is really far from the mountains. The commute is atrocious. I live here now and speak from experience. Co is not the place to go for college if you want to ski 3-4 days a week.... or even more.
PM if you have any questions, I would be happy to help!!
