When Big Sky’s Lone Peak Tram casts off from the loading dock and takes flight toward the summit, you feel like you’re ascending the inside of a volcanic crater. Here in The Bowl, sheer, arching walls of snow and ice-encrusted rock — some as steep as 50 degrees — seem to surround you, while a structure of concrete, steel and glass juts like a sci-fi base station from the top. Beneath it plunges the Big Couloir, one of North America’s most challenging runs.
Along with the Gullies, the 26 A-to-Z Chutes on the crater’s rim and the North Summit Snowfield, this is but one of more than 30 expert descents, and a key to Big Sky’s extreme skiing reputation. More cautious skiers and boarders have two return options: via Liberty Bowl (rated a single-black diamond) or, if that’s too daunting, a round-trip on the tram.
Technically, Lone Mountain is a laccolith, a volcano that never erupted. Instead, magma flowed laterally between layers of rock, creating a series of “branches” that diminish in size up to the top, like a Christmas tree. Then it hardened into dacite. The crater formed when glaciers scoured the softer, sedimentary stone surrounding it. Those ice rivers then worked their way down the mountain, carving out cirques, aspects and couloirs. Thus, Big Sky represents the union of two opposing elements — fire and ice.
The area’s principal developer, Lone Mountain Land Company, has been building upon both. Over the past decade, LMLC’s commercial, residential and hospitality projects have ranged from cozy lodge-style efforts to the clean, coolness of mountain-modern design. The Town Center walking village, which the company has been developing for the past decade, looks like it belongs in the Old West while serving as the host to rodeos and the annual Wildlands music festival (Riley Green and Carrie Underwood will headline the event on July 31 to August 1). LMLC’s parent company, CrossHarbor Capital Partners of Boston, revived the Yellowstone Club from bankruptcy in 2009, then purchased the Spanish Peaks and Moonlight Basin areas in 2013. A year later, CrossHarbor created Lone Mountain Land Company as a local entity to manage its growing portfolio.
Among its properties, Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star Montage Big Sky opened in December 2021, becoming the area’s first luxury resort. Now Montana’s largest building by area, it’s a multi-story hotel with peaked roofs, a classic mountain lodge evocative of warm hearths.
Then, in November 2025, LMLC executed a precise jump-turn in the opposite direction as it launched One&Only Moonlight Basin. With its glass and black steel construction, courtesy of Olson Kundig Architects, the One&Only glitters like a collection of icy diamonds from within an evergreen forest. “This hotel connects Big Sky to the world like nothing else before,” Matt Kidd, president of LMLC, said at the ribbon cutting. “We are now a global destination.”
Big Sky’s history has unfolded through a series of such juxtapositions. In the late 1800s, homesteading and ranching supplanted the nomadic ways of indigenous nations such as the Crow, Shoshone and Flathead, who fished, hunted and foraged in the summers. Dude ranches then brought “city slickers” into the mix. When Montana native and NBC anchor Chet Huntley founded Big Sky Resort in 1973, his fame drew skiers from urban centers such as New York and Los Angeles seeking a “hideaway” in the mountains. Tragically, Huntley died of lung cancer just three days before the formal dedication ceremony in March 1974. Ski industry legend Everett Kircher, of Boyne Resorts, later purchased Big Sky in 1976.
Moonlight Basin opened in 2003 as a separate resort, but Boyne bought it 10 years later and folded it into Big Sky. With this acquisition and expanded terrain in the Spanish Peaks, the resort effectively matches Park City as the largest in North America. Still under Boyne’s ownership and management, it has also kept pace with on-mountain improvements. Initially, Big Sky operated just four lifts; today, it runs 40, including the tram (new as of December 2023), two heated bubble chairs that opened in 2022 and 2024 and the 10-person Explorer Gondola that debuted for the 2025-26 season.
Though Montage Big Sky and One&Only Moonlight Basin have strong partnerships with Lone Mountain Land Company and Boyne, their approaches to being year-round destinations are as different as their design characteristics. A stay at Montage feels like you’ve tapped into Big Sky’s history. Massive photographs of forests, peaks, wildlife and gold-medal trout rivers transport you into the wilderness. Country music two-steps through the hallways and common areas, and live performers take requests for classics in Alpenglow, the central lounge and bar at the hotel’s core. The Four-Star Cortina serves up some of the most tender bison steaks you’ll ever taste.
“Big Sky is a little more rugged, but that gives it a charm,” Montage Big Sky general manager Christian Maeder tells us. And yet, the resort flashes contemporary flair as well. Taikun serves edible art over a multi-course omakase dinner during elevated pop-ups across the summer and winter seasons. One bite of scorched otoro, and it’s clear this is no one-horse town.
If Montage connects you to Big Sky’s roots, One&Only Moonlight revels in its future. It’s the brand’s first property in the U.S., and general manager Serge Ditesheim says they chose Olson Kundig for One&Only because, “They’ve designed plenty of exquisite mountain homes. It was a bit of a wild card, though, because this was their first hotel.”
The lobby feels comfortable, like a living room — albeit an expansive one with an unobscured view of Lone Mountain. “Nineteen homes are right in front of us, but we don’t see them because they’re built to the height of the lodge pines,” Ditesheim says. And while the use of black steel and glass creates a sophisticated, urban vibe throughout the property, Olson Kundig introduced organic elements to provide balance. “The rocks were basically taken off the mountain,” Ditesheim says. “Lichen is still growing on them.”
Rather than contain all of the features under one roof, the design team set signature restaurant Akira Back, One&Only Moonlight Basin Spa (with post-treatment oxygen on tap) and the Moonshack speakeasy in separate buildings. Likewise, the One&Only Sky Lodge headquarters The Landing restaurant and all outdoor activities, including skiing and boarding. A heated gondola whisks you down to the Madison Eight, the world’s longest eight-person chairlift.
On the other hand, ski-in, ski-out Montage offers direct snow access through Compass Sports, where staff will help you in and out of your boots or provide expert, custom boot fitting. “You can literally click into your bindings and go,” Maeder says. “We never have lines, and you can ski from here all the way to Moonlight Basin without doing anything harder than a blue. Or you can hit Lone Peak for advanced and expert terrain.”
While Lone Mountain Land Company and the two hotels have transformed Big Sky, the crown of recent developments sits atop the mountain. Kircliff, the resort’s two-story alpine summit observatory, is anchored to a rock glacier and will move along with it. With protective slippers that stretch over your boots, you can walk out on the glass floor and feel suspended at 11,166 feet. You’ll see Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks on a clear day, nearly a dozen mountain ranges and horizons shimmering over three states. If you squint, you might spot golden eagles soaring or a mountain goat observing adventurers from its perch atop the Headwaters Ridge.
As Ditesheim says, “Having skiing, mountain biking and hiking right here at your doorstep, you can finish your coffee and get started. That’s true luxury.”
