A full week into the festival, I finally hit the slopes for a few hours yesterday to do some "research" about Sundance attitudes on the mountain. As one old-school Sundancer we talked to reminisced, the festival used to be about skiing from 9am until 3pm, and then watching movies till 3am. These days, non-movie-watching time seems to be much more focused on wheeling and dealing.

The happy side effect of this drift away from ski-and-a-movie culture, however, is that during the ten days of Sundance the slopes are relatively deserted. Many of the usual ski and snowboarding tourists are scared off by the herds of film- and party-goers, while the locals hole up at home for the duration of the attack. But, riding the lifts at Park City Mountain Resort yesterday, I discovered a small set of savvy skiers — from North Carolina to the District of Colombia to southern California — who travel to Utah every year specifically to ski during Sundance because they get the mountains all to themselves.

Of course, one can still run into trouble even in a pristine natural environment: as we rode up the lift for a final run, we saw a snowboarder wipe out while carving through a stand of aspens. Half-laughing, half-crying, he shouted out to his friend, "that tree totally did not move!"