Sun Valley Id

Every July since 1983, Idaho's posh Sun Valley Resort has become a summer camp of sorts for media, technology and financial moguls. Between presentations, forums, tennis, golf and cocktail parties, some key deals are struck. Here is a sample of watershed moments through the years from the confab, which runs through Saturday, hosted by investment banker Herbert Allen Jr.

Since it began in 1983, the annual conference for top money managers and investors sponsored by Wall Street power broker Herbert Allen Jr. has been a barometer of the shifting sands of the media landscape. In the early days, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and maverick cable TV tycoon John Malone were the top draws of the exclusive event. At this year's event, held last week at the Sun Valley Resort, Internet billionaires were the belles of the ball.

The paragliders lifted silently off Bald Mountain, great birds of red and yellow in a blue sky, sailing over skiers on slopes lighted almost unimaginably bright white by the afternoon sun. Near a ski lodge, a man pedaled a green bicycle, his young son on the handlebars. Two brown dogs wrestled in the snow. It was all so much colorful nirvana, except for the spooky black Suburbans and the guys with the guns. "All the Secret Service -- it's weird.

Sun Valley is not the biggest ski resort in NorthAmerica, the highest or the most luxurious. It does not have the longest ski runs or the most snow. It's surely not the easiest place to get to. But it is Sun Valley. And many ski experts agree that, after years of neglect and decline, Sun Valley once again ranks among the best, anywhere.