Weekend Escape: Utah : POPPING UP TO Park City : Cheap flights transform snowy Wasatch Range into a ski getaway with off-the-slopes allure

I’m short on stamina and skiing skills, even shorter on time and patience.

A weekend in snow country? Not if it means battling freeway traffic and crowded slopes, only to crumple from exhaustion after a few hours of creaky parallel turns.

But last month, when I realized my husband and I could fly from Los Angeles to the foot of Utah’s snow-drenched Wasatch Range in under two hours--and pay just $190 round trip for two on a Delta “companion fare”--I grabbed a calendar and plucked our ski goggles out of storage. (Southwest offers the same fare via its “friends fly free” ticket.)

The plan: We’d arrive in Salt Lake City on Saturday morning, rent a car ($27.99 per day, weekend rate) and drive about 40 minutes east to the gussied-up mining town of Park City. We’d spend that first day window shopping, sipping lattes (this is Utah’s version of Aspen, after all) and exploring the surrounding mountains, then work on our parallel turns before flying home Sunday night.

What we hadn’t counted on was the fact that half of Hollywood was headed in the same direction. The January weekend we’d picked coincided with the opening of the wildly popular Sundance Film Festival, and the only Park City room we could find would have cost us as much as our airline tickets. Our affordable, albeit offbeat solution: a $75 room, full breakfast included, at aptly named Patricia’s Country Manor, a bed-and-breakfast establishment located about 20 minutes from Park City in the drowsy farming town of Kamas.

After collecting our rental car at the Salt Lake airport and barreling into the mountains on lightly traveled Interstate 80, we nabbed a prime parking space on Park City’s Main Street--a six-block stretch of restaurants and gift shops, many of them housed in renovated Victorians. Gleefully reminding ourselves that if we’d started off for Mammoth that Saturday morning we’d still be a couple of hours from our destination, we ducked into the free Park City Museum for a quick grounding in the town’s past.

The handsome brick building, which doubles as Park City’s Visitor Information Center, was built in 1885 and reconstructed after a fire leveled three-quarters of town 13 years later. Here, we learned that Park City mines produced more than $400 million in silver and 23 millionaires--thanks to miners laboring seven days a week for $3 a day.

We could have continued our history lesson with a self-guided walking tour past 35 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. But it was almost lunchtime, and the blackboard specials at nearby Cafe Terigo were far more enticing: fresh swordfish sandwiches with lemon basil aioli, and smoked duck and sun-dried tomato ravioli in a sage broth. In the first of many reminders that we’d arrived on one of Park City’s glitziest weekends of the year, our neighbor at an adjoining table kept her cellular phone in full view throughout the meal--with one eye on her copy of Daily Variety and the other on who was coming through the front door.

After strolling up Main Street for a free sample of chocolate chip cookies at Mrs. Fields (the company is based here, and founder Debbie Fields lives nearby), we traded Southwestern art galleries and black-garbed studio execs for a drive in the country.

Exalting in the blue skies and dry-as-toast pavement--and recalling our rental car agent’s boast that Utah has both the best snow on earth and the best system for removing it--we headed east on four-lane Utah 248 toward Kamas.

Along the way, we chuckled at signs warning motorists of upcoming “Deer X-Walk.” We learned later that the “X-Walk” signs and accompanying chain-link fences are a new attempt to funnel the area’s abundant deer and elk to specific crossing areas--and thus cut down on accidents.

Our destination, Patricia’s Country Manor, turned out to be a rambling, one-story home on a quiet street: a 7,000-square-foot version of grandma’s house, decorated with owners Patricia and John Skomars’ family photos and English china. Our comfortable room was one of five guest rooms, all with private bath and either a queen or two double beds. We didn’t sample the outdoor hot tub, but knew we’d appreciate our cloudlike, goose-down comforter when the thermometer plummeted to near zero that night.

We devoted the rest of the afternoon to meandering, driving about 25 minutes south into the Heber Valley past massive bales of hay and thick-coated ponies prancing in frozen pastures. (We were too late to hitch a ride on the Heber Valley Historic Railroad, also known as the “Heber Creeper”--a steam train that makes scenic weekend runs from Heber City into Provo Canyon.) And just before sunset, we sampled a few miles of Utah 150, touted in guidebooks as one of the prettiest in the state. The road hugged Beaver Creek as it climbed into the Uinta Mountains, past aspen drizzled with snow and a sign announcing “Beaver Creek Nudist Ranch” (closed for the season, one would hope).

Before driving back into Park City for a couple of raspberry wheat beers at the Wasatch Brew Pub, we opted for an early dinner at Kamas’ Mount Air Cafe. The Zagat Restaurant Guide had recommended its Park City branch for “down-home, truck-stop eats.” Our grilled salmon and Navajo taco (taco meat over biscuits) weren’t anything to write home about, but the just-under-$15 bill was a lot less than what the movie folk were paying at Park City’s trendy Barking Frog and Riverhorse Cafe.

The next morning, over a “we’ll be skiing, so we can justify the calories” breakfast of coconut-orange muffins, three-cheese quiche, fried potatoes and fresh grapefruit, we plotted our single day on the slopes.

Wolf Mountain (formerly Park West), whose $25-per-person, per-day lift ticket was the cheapest of Park City’s three ski areas, had been our first choice. But a bartender in Park City persuaded us to pop for Deer Valley at $47 per person instead. His reasoning: The resort pampered intermediates like us with meticulously groomed slopes and a limit of 4,500 skiers per day to avoid overcrowding.

As luck would have it, we’d only skied three runs at Deer Valley when I tumbled into a chairlift--jostling my husband, who in turn jammed his ski pole against the lift, sending a stab of pain down his right hand. A resolutely cheerful first-aid staffer at the top of Bald Eagle Mountain persuaded him to call it quits, and as we skied gingerly down to the base lodge, I was faced with a dilemma: accompany my injured spouse for the five-minute drive to Park City for an X-ray, or check in by phone between runs down Homeward Bound and Last Chance.

At his urging, I kissed him goodby and headed back up the mountain. When we reconnoitered at the lodge a few hours later, his broken finger swathed in bandages, I felt a pang of guilt--but not for long.

I remembered the thrill of floating down Deer Valley’s broad, manicured slopes, without waiting in a lift line to reach them. I recalled my sunny, al fresco lunch of steamed artichokes and Caesar salad with fennel dressing at the Silver Lake Lodge. And as I helped my husband into the car for the quick trip back to Salt Lake City and home, I knew I’d make the same choice all over again.

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Budget for Two

Round-trip air fare: $190.00

Car rental, gas, taxes: 82.55

Patricia’s Country Manor, 1 night: 81.66

Lunch, Cafe Terigo: 24.47

Dinner, Mount Air Cafe: 16.64

Beers, Wasatch Brew Pub: 6.50

Ski equipment rental: 34.28

Lift tickets, Deer Valley: 94.00

Lunch for one, Silver Lake Lodge: 9.75

Parking at LAX 18.00

FINAL TAB: $557.85

Patricia’s Country Manor, P.O. Box 849, Kamas, Utah 84036; tel. (800) 658-0643. Deer Valley Resort: P.O. Box 3149, Park City, Utah 84060; tel. (800) 424-3337. Park City Chamber of Commerce: P.O. Box 1630, Park City, Utah 84060; tel. (800) 453-1360.