Southwestern Montana: Skiing the white-open Spaces of Big Sky

In southwestern Montana -- big ski country -- two resorts team up for an experience more mammoth than Mammoth. No lines. No hassles. And views of three states.

By Chris Erskine, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
12:00 AM PST, December 10, 2006

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Big Sky, Montana. — You wake up to a fresh handkerchief of snow draped over the mountain, 4 inches deep and as light as linen, atop a 5-foot base. You lug your skis to the lift. "Is it open?" you wonder, since so few fellow skiers are around. It's open. It's Montana. Get used to it.

This is the land where the circus doesn't stop, where skiing is an escape from the crowds and the traffic, where a ski lift doesn't have a line like Starbucks, 20 deep and a little ornery.

Talk about your sugar highs. Look at all that pristine powder, which swirls in the morning air like pixie dust. Big Sky Resort and neighboring Moonlight Basin offer creamy, six-mile runs where skiers and boarders can go 20 minutes without seeing another soul — on the intermediate runs. On the expert runs, high up the hill, you can go hours.

Add luxe slope-side accommodations, 400 inches of snowfall annually and Yellowstone National Park just down the road and you have the ingredients for one of U.S. skiing's best-kept secrets, which, ironically enough, was the brainchild of a newsman.

A retirement project of NBC anchorman Chet Huntley, Big Sky Resort goes back less than 40 years. Huntley died in 1974, days before the ribbon-cutting. Subsequent growing pains were widespread. Sewerage lagoons leaked. Condos were built and immediately condemned.

Under new owner Boyne USA, Big Sky persevered and now boasts 150 trails on three mountains. A second, adjoining resort, Moonlight, opened in 2003.

The two operations have teamed up to offer a joint pass to 5,512 acres of skiable terrain this year. California's Mammoth, by contrast, offers 3,500. The two resorts boast 4,100 feet of continuous skiing from peak to bottom; Mammoth offers 3,100.

Ski magazine's readers' survey called the Big Sky area "God's country. A great place to hide away " and described it as "what Colorado was like years ago."

So, it's not just the mountain. It's the elbow room and breathtaking runs where it's just you and the squirrels.

What's the catch? It must be hard to get to, right? Or snooty? Or riddled with rabid elk and rednecks?

Well, they do appear to be selling off this majestic state one log cabin at a time. In Montana, the only thing more ubiquitous than snow is the blizzard of real estate brochures. But this is not a deal-breaker. This is merely the price of paradise. Montana isn't a state; it's a Larry McMurtry novel.

I didn't find any fatal flaws on my trip last winter, only some cautionary flares along the way. And pixie dust galore.

Big hill, little nightlife

FROM L.A., it takes about five hours to reach Bozeman, the drop-in point for the Big Sky area, with a change of planes at Salt Lake City or Denver likely along the way.

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