7 Days Skiing at Big Sky Resort

I love Big Sky Resort. I’ve skied there the most, right behind my home Seattle-area Crystal Mountain Resort. I first went in 2017, and this year in 2026 made my fourth trip to Montana. Conditions have ranged from good to terrible over those four times, but I really think you can’t go too wrong with a trip to Big Sky.

I’ll probably refer to my overall experiences in a few places, but in this post I’ll mostly focus on my most recent late February 2026 trip. Big Sky has been making some pretty significant changes to its infrastructure, so if you’ve gone in the past the mountain might look different now.

In case you haven’t read any of my other ski resort reviews, I consider myself an advanced skier who can tackle most single blacks, although sometimes reluctantly, and occasionally a double black if I’m feeling spicy. My first time at Big Sky, I was much closer to an intermediate skier who was attempting blacks, so I do have some perspective there as well. So this post is written from that point of view.

Big Sky Lodging & Transportation

Transportation from Seattle is super simple – both Alaska and Delta run non-stops several times a day to Bozeman Airport. From Bozeman it’s about an hour drive to Big Sky Resort. We’ve rented a car three out of the four times we’ve visited, and private van transportation once. Both methods of travel seemed perfectly fine, although we somehow have never encountered truly snowy weather on any of our driving days.

For lodging, we have always chosen to rent a house as we travel with a group that averages eight people, so a house makes the most sense. One of the best features of Big Sky is the numerous houses or condos that offer ski in/ski out. I’d say if you don’t have any true beginners in your group, renting something with ski access is the way to go. If you do have beginners, definitely eyeball the map very closely. Most of the ski access is labeled green, but may have large flats or just a really long path to get to a lift, which might be hard if you’re not comfortable skiing.

The house we stayed in this trip specifically had the weirdest ski in access I’ve ever encountered. You had to take the residential ski path, hike up a small hill, take a lift, climb stairs, then maneuver your way across more residential paths that were unlabeled and also crossed two streets. Despite all that – still worth not having to drive or hike with your gear in the morning, but just make sure you double check the ski routes before you book.

Skiing At Big Sky

Big Sky is huge. It’s massive. It started out as two separate resorts and then in 2013 mashed together into one giant behemoth of a resort. Despite that, it’s still not too bad to cross across the resort – there’s not too many huge flat catwalks that will take up most of your time (Vail I am specifically looking at you). Each lift also seems laid out really well, it’s easy to spend your day in one part of the mountain and never feel the need to go super far afield if the conditions are good.

If the conditions are bad… well, there’s a lot of groomers. A ton of groomers. I loved it. Our conditions were not great, we really only had like an inch of fresh snow the whole time, and the west coast did not do well at all in early 2026, so off-piste was awful and icy and rocky. So the great groomers were really necessary for our trip. Or at least for me because I hate icy moguls.

I’ve broken down the resort into sections and highlighted my favorite runs below. I skipped some areas that I either didn’t ski much this trip, or don’t have an experience to highlight.

Andesite Mountain

Yes, there are multiple mountains at Big Sky. I told you it was big! Andesite Mountain has three lifts – Ramcharger, Thunder Wolf, and Southern Comfort. You can lap all of these lifts which makes it easy to spend a day just in this part of the resort alone.

Ramcharger has a ton of runs right off of it, generally a selection of groomed and ungroomed runs. This particular trip I loved Ambush specifically, it seemed like it had the best groomed conditions and you could just zoom without worrying too much about ice patches.

Thunder Wolf is a really solid lift in my opinion. Big Horn rips. Elk Horn Meadows and the steeper paths that lead into it make up a wide open area with a few trees. With fresh snow, it’s awesome to find your way across the open field. Without fresh snow it’s moguls from top to bottom, which maybe is your deal but I preferred to just go fast on Big Horn.

Southern Comfort is a little shallower than other parts of the mountain and has some greens and real chill blues – I would have loved to learn on paths this wide. If there’s good snow, there’s also nice tree areas off of this lift.

Lone Peak Tram

When I first traveled to Big Sky, the Lone Peak Tram was terrifying. It was essentially a bucket that you waited thirty minutes in line for that you’d cram like sardines into and there was a dude in the bucket telling you that the conditions at the top were really miserable and terrible and if you weren’t an expert skier you should just turn around and if you didn’t turn around you’d probably die or maim yourself. There was nothing fun about the tram experience.

Now, the tram is this wonderful vehicle with wide windows that give you an expansive view as you go up the mountain, and they even allow non-skiers to experience it. Things have changed at Big Sky, and this is probably the most obvious of the changes.

The thing is, back in the day, the terrifying bucket was included with your lift ticket and now the tram is still included but only if you buy a day ticket and not if you’re using the Ikon Pass or a season pass. If you are using a pass, going up the tram is $25 minimum for each time you take it, and that price can go up if demand is high. Demand wasn’t high because there was no new snow when we went, so it was $25. That’s still a non-trivial amount of dollars to take a single run.

Granted, there’s a lot of crazy expert terrain off the tram, so if you want to do the famous Big Couloir you just need to pay the money and deal with it. They have added a nice viewing platform at the top called Kircliff with a glass bottom so you can look out over the drop from the mountain. That scared some people but I am weirdly fearless around certain heights so it didn’t bother me. You’ll have to decide if the viewing platform is worth the price, but it is pretty cool, especially if you have a sunny day where you can see the surrounding landscape.

The Liberty Bowl

The Liberty Bowl was my personal nemesis of Big Sky. It’s the only single black way down from the Lone Peak. The first time I did it way back in 2017 I probably should have heeded the scary warning and just turned around and went down the tram. But I did not, and I got maybe a third of the way down before I full yard sale-d and slid a decent number of feet. In 2019 I felt far more prepared and still ate it at the icy entrance, sliding down the slick slope a number of feet again. They’re not joking when they say you should know how to self-arrest.

Anyway, with the institution of the extra fee to take the tram, and the garbage conditions, I was certain that I was not going to attempt Liberty Bowl again this year, until of course my friends wanted to go up the tram and I followed and it’s not like I’m going to take the sightseeing version.

I crushed it. Vanquished my nemesis. Third time is the charm, it turns out.

South Peak Area

This area is directly underneath the Liberty Bowl and serviced by the Dakota and Shedhorn lifts. It was complete nasty rocky garbage this trip with the lower snow depth and lack of new snow. However, if there’s good snow, this area rips. Specifically Bavarian Forest, which is a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure tree area. It’s a bit of a journey to get to any other part of the mountain from here, but if the conditions are good you can spend a lot of time in this area.

Madison Area

This is a huge swath of land to collapse into one area, but it’s served by a massive lift and one tiny one, so it kind of makes sense. Madison 8 is apparently the longest 8 person lift in the world. We didn’t have the weather to make the bubbles and heated seats make sense this trip, but the previous iteration of this lift could get nasty cold.

There’s a ton of runs in this area – blues, blacks, groomed, ungroomed, tree runs, etc. Unfortunately this was not really that good at all for my recent trip. The area at the top of the Lone Tree lift gets really windswept, so there’s always rocks and ice, but it gets really bad when there’s not a lot of base snow on the ground. Horseshoe towards the bottom of the mountain was rock city and genuinely not fun to scrape down. Luckily there’s enough terrain at Big Sky that you could ignore this huge area and still have a lot to ski, but it was unfortunate because it can be really fun.

Skiing at Big Sky – Conclusion

If you haven’t been able to tell, I’m a big fan of this mountain. It’s really fun to just go explore it, it’s huge and there’s always something new. There’s a huge variety of terrain, from chill open runs to crazy steeps and trees. I’ve enjoyed my time at Big Sky as a mostly blue skier to the more advanced skier that I am today, and I think a lot of experience levels could have a good time here.

Since I first visited in 2017, they’ve upgraded two lifts, added a gondola, replaced porta potties with actual toilets. The new lifts all have bubbles and heated seats – you don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve had a heated chairlift on a cold day! I’m quite impressed with the updates they’ve done to the mountain. It was really good before and now it’s a great on-mountain experience. It’s refreshing to see money be put into ski infrastructure where it actually improves your day on the mountain.

Even with the upgrades, Big Sky still doesn’t feel overcrowded. Yes, you now have to wait five minutes for a lift instead of skiing right up. But it could certainly be far worse (again, looking at you Vail). There’s not a lot of choke points on the mountain, so it felt very rare to be concerned about the crowdedness of a run. That’s hard to find at a mountain this big nowadays. I heard via lift chatter that the lodges are really crowded, and I will say that on-mountain food options are pretty few and far between. But, if you just get ski-in / ski-out lodging and shove a PB&J into your ski backpack, you’ll never experience that.

What’s your experience at Big Sky? What’s your favorite run, tell me in the comments! If you liked this, go check out my other ski resort reviews, or let me know what else you’d like to see for next year. And, as always, if you don’t want to miss a new review, sign up for the Ashley Reviews newsletter!