One Night in a Five-Star Resort at the Center of Big Sky’s Transformation

Welcome to One Night In, a series about staying in the most unparalleled places available to rest your head.

At around 2.2 million acres, Yellowstone National Park is vast—which makes visiting it a big trip to plan, logistically. Figuring out where everything is, what to see, and where to stay to best accommodate the latter requires some careful perusing of many sample blog itineraries, and mapping of routes between spots. I suppose if you have an RV and book campsites ahead you can wing more of it than if you’re just driving, but for those that want a pleasant experience, it’s best to be prepared.

I learned this when I—fairly last minute, for Yellowstone at least, in that people often plan their trips there a year in advance—decided to organize a road trip there since we would "be in the area"—aka Colorado, a day’s drive away from the actual park. I had already been to many of Colorado’s national parks and always wanted to see Yellowstone, so why not make it work? I quickly learned that in-park and nearby accommodations book up quickly—though you can be on the lookout for cancellations, which happen fairly frequently—especially for the most desirable and/or affordable properties. It was during this research that I realized that an actually not crazy choice for my visit would be to stay not in the park, or in West Yellowstone (the most popular town base for those visiting) but in Big Sky, Montana, just a couple short hours away from some of the central Yellowstone sites (again, out there, that’s close).

One of the most touted new properties in Big Sky is the aptly named Montage Big Sky, part of the newer offerings from luxury hotel management brand Montage International. Opened in 2021, the hotel is spotless, and on several "Where to Stay in Yellowstone" lists featuring high-end properties. So after receiving a press release about the property, and realizing I would be in the area during my fall road trip, I reached out to the team to see if I could arrange a stay to see what, exactly, was going on in Big Sky. My couple days there gave me a quiet, up-close look at what major development has meant for this formerly sleepy town.

Tuesday

4 p.m.: After a day seeing Yellowstone’s many sites (and sights)—Old Faithful, the Grand Prismatic Spring, and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, among others—we drive through the town of West Yellowstone—kitschy and fun—and along 191, which crisscrosses back and forth between Montana and Wyoming, along the Gallatin River. I’d been warned of the construction going on near the hotel by looking at some the Tripadvisor reviews, but was curious to see exactly what that entailed up close. Indeed, this town, and mountain, are fully in the midst of a massive development project, a process intended to be completed in 2025. The view out of the front of the hotel is of the residential, purchasable apartments being built up (the Montage is part hotel, part luxury residences; the residences cost between $1.5 and 2.5 million). Everything is brand new—the roads newly paved, the vacation houses you drive past look like they just sprang out of the ground.

Long known as a laid back, quiet place to go skiing, a "real" skier’s dream, Big Sky is in the middle of a big shift, and the many parties at play in that shift speak to the money tied up there. The Montage, for example, is owned by the Lone Mountain Land Company, which is part of CrossHarbor Capital Partners, a Boston-based private equity company, and also owns the nearby Spanish Peaks Mountain Club, another luxury residential property. Meanwhile, Big Sky the mountain, owned and managed by Boyne Resorts—originally founded by ski visionary Everett Kircher, and a huge player in the ski resort game—is accessible from these various properties, as they are all literally ski-in, ski-out.

And the Big Sky 2025 plan has gotten plenty of attention. First announced in 2016, as Bloomberg reported, Boyne "unveiled a 10-year, $150 million capital investment plan to transform not just the resort but also the small mountain community bearing the same name from a remote outpost to a full-fledged luxury destination." Indeed, "Some expect the Montage to shift the energy of Big Sky from an unpretentious ski town to a luxury paradise complete with rising real estate costs and significant outside investment," reported Forbes last year.

I’m not much of a skier—to put it bluntly, it makes me crave death—so spending time there in the cuspy fall season was perfect for me. To my surprise, because I’m here as press, upon arrival, we’re given a full itinerary for the next two days. Our room is a suite, overlooking the Spanish Peaks, with a small sitting room with a fireplace and a spread of welcome snacks; had we been paying for it, it would have cost over $1,000 a night. Walking through to the bedroom, the other side of the fireplace is also on, next to a large closet. There are not one but two bathrooms, the larger of which features beautiful marble, a deep sunken tub, and some unique fixtures that I immediately take a photo of to go in my "would love to replicate this later" folder. Indeed, design for the property was done by BraytonHughes Design Studios, out of San Francisco, who were also responsible for the famed nearby Yellowstone Club. But I don’t linger long: I head down to the heated outdoor pool, which is almost empty, and swim a few lengths in peace.