Vancouver, Canada. I am about an hour from skiing, sailing, canoing, hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing, et al; throughout most of the year.

The trick is to work for a Valley firm, making Valley wages, and telecommuting; SAP is the only local shop that pays a decent wage.

We Vancouverites are spoiled. I just finished an 18 month stint in the Bay Area. One of the biggest inconveniences was the driving time (especially with traffic) to get to the mountains.

In Seattle now and it's a great compromise. Similar wages to the Bay Area but similar geography and outdoor access as Vancouver. And even with the exchange rate housing is cheaper than Vancouver.

I spent a summer in Seattle and did more hiking, kayaking, and biking than I did in the year prior. It's an amazing place to work if you like the outdoors.

I heard Vancouver is almost as expensive as SF - at least housing. Is that the case?

In SF, house prices and rent are pretty close. In Vancouver they are disconnected. Equivalent rent can be about half or lower of what the mortgage would cost. Even though the average house is about $4 million now.

The bigger problem is the relatively low wage.

And on top of that everything is more expensive in Canada.

Seattle is definitely the economic sweet spot, and I would live there if it wasn't for the weather and the companies I can work for.

Anecdotally: 640 sqr feet around Stadium station is about 2300 CDN/mo.

Is it tough to move to Canada as a US resident w/ a US job?

These are the options: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/eligibility.asp

Consider Colorado. A strong tech scene and world class in those activities.

If skiing/climbing/hiking are what you want specifically, you can do a lot better than the bay area in the US. The bay area is good for these things, but there are plenty of places in north america that are closer to better opportunities for them (especially skiing!)

Yeah once you live in the Rockies you realize how overcrowded the California resorts are, and how bad the snow is relative to what you get at 10-14k feet.

Do you feel sick at 14k? I will go to Colorado to ski for the first time this year. Wanted to go last year but then we had a great season at Tahoe.

No, but I was living at 7k in Santa Fe at the time. Also that will be just the top of the lifts, pretty sure all the bases are below 12 or 13k.

There's nothing lift-serviced in the US above 13k feet. Colorado has a number of 14ers, but no lifts run that high; the highest is Breck, where the highest lift runs to just below 13k. That's high enough to make everything more tiring, but low enough that there's no serious effects for most people. Even in CO, most ski lifts top out between 11k and 12k.