Living Large

Raising A Stein At Deer Valley

By Michael Conniff, 1-26-06

Before the hegira to retrieve the relative at the hospital, after the interstate and the tabernacles, there was the work of play to be done. His ticker had the good sense to go bad in Salt Lake City, and so for his elder sibling in Colorado that produced the perfect excuse to do a good deed while doing very well indeed at the Stein Eriksen Lodge at Deer Valley Resort in Park City, Utah.

You can tell everything about a person by where they like to go skiing—and where they stay once the opportunity presents itself. The skier or snowboarder who chooses the down-in-the-muck trailer over more commodious lodgings makes a statement about life styles and financial instruments in the form of a single crash pad. Money is always on the table when it comes to slip-sliding away.

I had a chance to stay at the Stein Eriksen Lodge during a stay in Park City, a half-hour or so outside of Salt Lake. The Stein was a treat to say the least, with five-star service from the moment you walk in the door. When the bellhop in the cowboy hat beckoned us into our room, we shared a collective intake of breath and that whispered basillica “wow.� The best thing you can say about a hotel room at a resort is “I could live here.� The very best thing you can say is the corollary: “I wish I lived here.� The Stein produced both emotions ba-bump, and the whirlpool on the deck overlooking the slopes closed the deal. For a night, at least, there were plush bathrobes to go with the gas-induced fireplace at our feet. It could be worse, but it was hard to know how it could be better.

When you’re up that high in a place like that, you have left the hoi polloi pretty far behind—at least as far as the Park City Resort and The Canyons in the near distance. Then you step out of the Stein and you’re swaddled in ubiquitous service of Deer Valley Resort. Now that kind of attention is not for everyone, and I found myself almost uncomfortable with such scrutiny. When it comes to skiing, I love the notion of discovery—of turning up that trail you didn’t even know was there—and I was at times chagrined by the military precision of the lift system and the preternaturally polite people who work it.

Then again, Deer Valley is famous for just that, and the idea of exclusivity embodied by this particular destination is made manifest by the exclusion of snowboarders. That alone doesn’t mean class warfare: Mad River Glen in Vermont, with the very same policy, is actually owned by a cooperative of locals dedicated to resisting change, and no one would accuse Alta, down the road from Park City in Little Cottonwood Canyon, of representing anything but the real thing in skiing. But at Deer Valley, the policy also creates a quietude that fits in perfectly with endless blues groomed to measurable corporate perfection. For the record, there is also a real estate office at the top of the gondola at Deer Valley.

It’s not easy to carp about a great experience, but there you have it. Deer Valley and the Stein came exactly as advertised: swanky, plush, precise, serene. At the end of the day in Park City, I still had my health and a sticker on my skis that said “Deer Valley.� The only thing the resort and the lodge can’t provide is the feeling that you really deserve it.

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