Wolf Creek is the champion of early-season and powder dumps in Colorado. It gets more snow, and it gets it more often, so you end up with many more powder opportunities. On the negative side, it's kind of small without a lot of vertical, but it's often running full-swing while other's are struggling. Pagosa springs is a nice laid back mountain town without most of the positives of such a town and few of the negatives of the high-end places like Tahoe and such. This means relatively cheap lodging available, I know there are shuttles that run from town to the resort. The tickets aren't too expensive. It's kind of a neat place to go skiing/snowboarding though due to being somewhat isolated from the rest of Colorado and the much more consistent conditions.
I've skied a lot of places, it's hard to sometimes get the "value" thing with decent lodging, not outrageous lift tickets, reasonable places to get a meal, the resort being relatively close-by, and so on. There are lots of other places I'd rather ski in other situations, but Wolf Creek is pretty fun.
Dry "desert powder" is the best. Utah and AZ (Flagstaff) have some amazingly light fluff when it dumps. Before I'd experienced it, I thought it was all hype, but it really is what it claims to be, especially compared to the slop in the pacific. As much as those guys don't want to admit it, powder dumps there just aren't the same. Colorado isn't far behind in this way, so it's a good backup to the more desert areas.
I did mammoth a few years back and got totally skunked out by the conditions. It was horrible.
Now I have a mom-and-pop ski hill w/lifts 2 miles from my house! A pretty large resort is about 45 min south. I'm excited because I'll be able to get some runs in this winter without spending an arm and a leg doing so.