The pleasures of southwestern Montana in the summertime are no secret. In the warmer months, fly-fishing guides such as Teddy Janney of Gallatin River Guides are busy with people seeking to reenact A River Runs Through It. Yellowstone National Park gets nearly a million visitors a month between June and August, and space is scarce at viewing platforms in beloved sites such as Grand Prismatic Spring and Old Faithful, across state lines in Wyoming. But despite that, many travellers still think of the Gallatin Range and Gallatin River, in the northwest of the park, as a winter destination. (Big Sky Resort is the fourth-largest ski area in North America, with nearly 6,000 acres of skiable terrain.) Because, unlike other Rockies resorts such as Aspen, Telluride and Jackson, the community of Big Sky didn’t exist before skiing. It only started to take shape after 1973, when Big Sky Resort opened at the foot of Lone Mountain.
Big Sky’s zoom-upmarket started in 1997 with the opening of the Yellowstone Club, an ultra-exclusive domain with an 18-hole golf course and a private ski area (current members include Mark Zuckerberg, Melinda French Gates, Tom Brady and numerous titans of culture and commerce). Then the pandemic created a bigger spike in millionaires snapping up second homes, motivated by the promise of privacy and unspoiled natural beauty. But although the twisty highway through Gallatin Canyon is busier in the mornings and Big Sky’s small-town core is being challenged by development, some community members welcome the new blood and new money. Randy Hall, a Montana native who has lived and worked at Lone Mountain Ranch for more than 20 years as a naturalist guide and jack of all trades, recalls a time not long ago when Milkie’s, a beloved local pizza parlour, was the only place to eat out of season. Now there’s a new community centre, post office and school.
One morning I go for a hot-air balloon ride above it all. As we rise into the blue, the town looks diminutive, a thin ribbon of wooden condominiums and car parks in a brief clearing between foothills dense with conifers. On the flank of Lone Mountain, I make out the brown bulk of high-end hotel Montage Big Sky, which became the biggest building in Montana when it opened in 2021. It was joined last year by a second extravagant hotel, One&Only Moonlight Basin. Both seek to seduce well-heeled skiers, but also to convince them to return when the weather is fine. As Serge Ditesheim, the effervescent, mustachioed, Swiss-born general manager of One&Only Moonlight Basin, puts it, “We came for the winter and stayed for the summer.” When there isn’t snow on the ground, he goes mountain biking in the nearby Lee Metcalf Wilderness Area, where he can spot bald eagles, mountain goats, elk and sometimes even wolves or grizzlies from his saddle.
