Every program I looked at this year touted the stuff to do in the area, and I looked ALL over the country, but the types of activities vary. Take a look a Freida and see which states have programs, where they are in general, etc.
In general here are my opinions (my outdoorsy interests were snowboarding, bicycling, water sports and in TX I added "target shooting" since I had done that with family while I was there):
The West Coast: access to skiing/boarding, ocean, biking, everything you could want. Which is probably why tons of people want to go there. Lots of CA programs are nearish to great mountains, especially Davis. OHSU is in Portland, very outdoorsy city/state. Arizona's nice too. Lots of stuff to do in the whole state. Hawaii, 1 small program, lots of outdoor stuff. Basically need ties to Hawaii, and even if you have those, you may get rejected then unrejected and invited to interview. (West = Best area of the country).
South: Places in the South were proud of their biking opportunities, some had places to go boating/fishing/hunting. In Alabama, they said "In the winter, our airport has a direct flight to Salt Lake City, so you could leave here, at X time, and be on the slopes by like Y time (time for a decent amount of skiing), and return Sunday night."
NE: skiing, biking. But those are usually what I asked about.
Midwest: "skiing" -- don't believe them. it's not real. Mountain biking's decent and road biking's excellent.
