Big Sky Ski Resort: Rocky Mountains, Montana

Welcome back to Skiing Through Life! This week we’ll be exploring Big Sky Ski Resort in Montana. Big Sky is located 50 miles South of Bozeman, Montana and covers over 5800 skiable acres in the mountains. Big Sky is especially well known for their consistent snowfall that’s reliable almost every winter. Keeping in mind the 4 categories for every resort (trails, lessons, apres-ski activities, and lodging), let’s get started!

Trails

Big Sky in Montana has 3 main mountains, one of them primarily reserved for members of a private club called the Spanish Peaks Members Club. The Spanish Peaks Club is located on Spirit Mountain which is right above the smaller Flatiron Mountain. The two other main peaks are Andesite Mountain and Lone Mountain with Lone towering at over 11,000 feet. With a mountain of this size, there are certainly going to be challenging trails for expert skiers. The Lone peak offers strictly double black diamond terrain, so if you’re not a Level 3 skier, you should definitely make sure the highest lift you’re taking up on Lone peak is Challenger 3 or Lone Tree 4. If you were to take the Lone Peak Tram, this lift and and the Powder Seeker 6 only service black diamond bowls which can certainly be very challenging but also fun! For beginner and intermediate skiers, Andesite Mountain, and lower Lone Mountain are perfect for you! Andesite mountain has beautiful terrain at the top of the mountain and their main lift services greens even at the peak. For those looking forward to getting into the terrain park, taking swift current 4 or explorer 2 right out from the main village will bring you right to the park trails.

Lessons/Programs

As with most big mountains like this, Big Sky offers private lessons for every level of skier, group ski lessons, guided experiences, and local youth programs. With the guided experiences, the entire “lesson” is all about your preferences. This experience is less of a learning experience and more about exploring the mountain. Your guide can explore green and blue runs with you all day or you can go up to Lone Peak and ski in challenging avalanche territory because one of the perks of this experience is access to avalanche ski gear. With the local youth program, there is a big emphasis on enrolling young who live near or around the mountain because the program tries to build camaraderie throughout the sessions. The best aspect of this program is that they make a real effort to separate the groups by age which puts kids into smaller groups, so they get more personal attention from the instructors which is very important when learning how to ski when you’re that young.

Apres-Ski Activities

Moving onto acres-ski activities, after a long day on the mountain, there are lots of things to do for relaxing at the spa to exciting night life! In the winter, Big Sky offers 2 different types of ziplines, bungee trampolines, snowshoe tours, dog sledding, sleigh rides, and snowmobile tours. The resort also offers something that’s quite unique because most resorts haven’t offered it in years. This activity is called snow coach tours and what it offers is a climate-controlled experience in a car hybrid that can give you better access to trails and terrains for mostly cross-country skiing. In addition to these outdoor activities, Big Sky also has a great spa experience. The Solace Spa offers body treatments, massages, facials, and salon services.

Lodging

Like most ski resorts, Big Sky offers cabin rentals, condo and apartment rentals and even house rentals. In addition to this, there are tons of hotels and resorts to choose from. Some of the most popular include the slope side Huntley Lodge, the Snowshoe Condominium-Style hotel, the Summit Hotel at Big Sky, and the Whitewater Inn. In my experience, the best ski hotels are always the ones that are ski-in ski-out so always look for that when making accommodations which shouldn’t be too hard to find at a popular mountain like Big Sky!