Alpine County, CA

[minionofmidas]

Actually, the Mormon population of Alpine County dropped from ~50% in 2000 to 0% in 2010 according to the ARDA.

What this means is that there used to be a Mormon meetinghouse in Woodfords (which was founded by Mormons, way back in 1847.) It's membership was equal to half the county's, or four times that of Woodfords itself. Woodfords is situated five miles from the Nevada line, less than fifteen miles from Minden and Gardnerville.
I'm not sure if it was closed down (merged with one of the two Minden-based meetinghouses) or simply moved to Minden... but I'm pretty sure there are still quite a few Mormons living in the county.

Because the ARDA does not count the Native American Church, the only congregation in the county listed in the 2010 report is a non-denominational Evangelical assembly of 50 members; the remainder of the population is "unclaimed".
Alpine County is 20% Washoe Native American - although it includes no reservation land; quite a bit of offreservation trust land though - and the Washoe are to a sizable part Peyotists, the only ones this far west. Have been since 1936.

[minionofmidas]

Typical ski resort.  Most ski resorts tend to be quite liberal compared to surrounding areas.  Places like Blaine County in Idaho and Teton County in Wyoming have swung quite heavily towards the Democrats.  Likewise Pitkin county in Colorado went over 2/3 for Obama and it is a fairly white county.  Summit county in Utah, which has a lot of ski resorts but has a high Mormon population by contrast didn't totally follow this as swung massively towards Obama in 2008, but then in 2012 swung right back, although it would be interesting to see a precinct breakdown and see how much of that came from towns not connected to ski resorts.

But why are the ski resorts so liberal? Latino room-maids and kitchen-aids? Lots of aged hippies that have moved in to sell self-photographed postcards? Or locals getting concerned about climate change possibly eroding their income base (and increasing the risk of landslides sweeping away their homes)?

Think of the Green voters in big European cities. (Brighton, Berlin, Paris...)

Thinking of such voters would make me understand why surfing hotspots are liberal. The typical ski coach, however, would have grown up in the region (i.e  have a rural background), and rather fit the (republican-leaning) "some college" than the (democrat-leaning) "post-graduate" education strata.

In Austria and Bavaria, yes. America's ski resorts (actually, most of these places have summer tourism as well) are a bit further away from populated ex-agricultural parts.