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

Robyn Erlenbush
CRS, GRI, CRB, Broker Owner
Phone: (406) 586-1321
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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.

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.

By Chris Erskine, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

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