Long story short, last year I sold a property in Northern CA with the aim of buying in Truckee, CA (ski area); however between prices and wildfire risk we are now considering lakefront properties in MN or WI.  

Have your facts straight before you come online resorting to Ad Hominem attacks. 

Purchase price: $289,000 Cash invested: $25,000 Angel Fire is a ski and bike resort in New Mexico, perfect for first time investors to explore the STR world.

BP doesn't allow for much self promotion but I would be happy to send you a QA, as well as a local map to get you comfortable with the different resorts etc in the area.  

The resort is shut down for the next two months so Iḿ testing the waters here. 

If you had to focus on the best bang for the buck would you look at:- Whitefish (closest to Big Mountain and skiing)- Columbia Falls (neutral to Big Mountain and GNP)- Coram (presumable cheaper cost and closet to GNP but further from Big Mountain)

I'm looking at buying a vacation rental at a ski mountain.

I use Resort Cleaning and it works great.Sends them a request for a clean when a new booking gets made, they accept it, and then they can mark it as done when they're finished.Cost is $1 per clean you can elect to pay it or have the cleaners pay it.Only thing I don't like is that it doesn't show the cleaner the whole booking/calendar, only the cleaning date request. 

Those are other sources I could pull from but leave as last resort. 

I have a property in the Shenandoah VA area on Wintergreen Resort.