Sundance: Stars and Slopes Forever

For the double-black diamond crowd, Park City has screamingly steep bowls. The resort also courts snowboarders with four terrain parks crammed with boxes and rails. In one scene, Brandy shows off her winning moves at Park City's half pipe, which was used for the 2002 Olympic competition and has impressive 22-foot walls. Kelly Clark won the gold for the women that year, and the American men swept the medals.

On the lifts at Park City, conversations typically veered between slope and screen.

"I laughed. I cried," one boarder told me as we rode the nearly deserted King Con lift. He sounded strangely like a trailer for an old Bette Davis movie as he raved about "The Real Dirt on Farmer John," a Slamdance offering.

Slamdance is a cheeky alternative film festival that runs concurrently with Sundance. It sees itself as Sundance before Sundance sold out and went Hollywood. I had seen "Farmer John" Peterson himself on Main Street that morning, promoting his bio pic. He had been driving a tractor while dressed in coveralls, a bowler hat and a feather boa. The movie is about how he literally lost the farm.

"A must-see," the boarder proclaimed.

No Boards Allowed

My lift companion was plenty handsome enough for a walk-on (board-on?) part in "The Parallel View," but his looks would never get him past the ski patrol at Deer Valley, where I skied later in the week. That's because Deer Valley is one of the last board-free zones in the country.

Ski magazine readers voted Deer Valley the No. 1 ski resort in North America in 2005, partly because its slopes are better groomed than Pierce Brosnan. That No. 1 ranking is not just about lifts and layout and terrain, though. It's also about ambiance and amenities. Where else do ski valets greet arrivals at the base and offer to help carry ski equipment?

At tiny, cozy Cushing's Cabin at the top of Flagstaff Mountain (elevation 9,100 feet), where I adjourned one morning after making seven or eight runs down slopes unmarred by the telltale grooves that snowboards leave, the hot chocolate came lathered in whipped cream with a flotilla of miniature marshmallows afloat in the froth.

The luncheon buffet at Silver Lake Lodge was fresh and sumptuous, and the meals at Deer Valley's fancier eateries, such as the Snowpark Lodge, are discussed in gourmet magazines. The fireside dining at the Empire Canyon Lodge is the setting for one of the romantic interludes in "The Parallel View."

But the movie's big climactic scene is a cliffhanger at the Canyons.

This widespread ski area of multiple peaks and glades offers lots of entertainment for black and blue skiers and boarders, though not much for the greenies or beginners. But, sadly, I didn't get to see much of it.

You know when the movie audience is let in on something important that the main characters don't know about? Well, in "The Parallel View," the audience sees Brandy and her strictly blue-trail actor boyfriend go blithely past the sign at the base of the Ninety Nine 90 lift -- so named for the elevation at the top of the chair, the highest point at the Canyons. The camera zooms in on the sign that says the lift services only black-diamond and double-black diamond terrain -- expert and kamikaze stuff, in other words -- but Brandy is new to town and too caught up in her actor boyfriend to notice.