A Jewel In God’s Country The Resort That Chet Huntley Built Holds Sway Over Unspoiled Landscape
Few folks below boomer age probably remember Chet Huntley as one of the premier network news names in America.
In fact, it was something of a shock when 20 years ago, he split from his partner, David Brinkley, when the two were at the height of their network power.
Some say Walter Cronkite had something to do with the sudden departure of the lanky Westerner, but others close to him say it was the powerful and ceaseless pull of his beloved state of Montana.
Big Sky Country, it is called, a land where the winter wheat fields stretch to the horizon, and where the Rocky Mountains form an abrupt fortress wall, at 11,000-plus heights, as the mountain chain exits the northern border of the United States and marches through Alberta.
Compared to the tonier spots in the West, from Lake Tahoe through the Aspens and Sun Valley, resorts supercharged with Hollywood money - rich guys with deep tans and trophy wives - the Montana that Huntley knew was as unspoiled as when ranchers and miners found it more than a century ago.
Among the massive bowls and sawtooth peaks of these northern Rockies, Huntley built a ski area, Big Sky, just about 45 miles from Bozeman, north of Yellowstone National Park and the northwest corner of Wyoming.
Where nearly every wilderness area with a vista or two gets tagged as “God’s country,” in Montana’s Big Sky country you really start to believe it. And in the days when Huntley was building his ski area as a retirement hobby, it was perhaps the best truly open-space Rocky Mountain ski area that the average family could afford and enjoy together.
Over the years, not too much has changed to Big Sky except, sadly, the place has been discovered by the trend-setters and is now on the scope of huge numbers of people still looking to the Rockies for vacation and a new home.
Montana may well be the Colorado of the ‘90s.
But even now with growth and development, with the kind of settlement that breaks up the ranch country, there is still plenty of that pure addictive wide-open stuff that hooked Huntley into an early retirement two decades ago.
Big Sky itself is spread over 1,000 acres of skiing terrain, combining two separate peaks served by twin gondolas and four chairlifts. From these peaks, the skiing is mostly in the intermediate flat-out cruising on extremely long runs that, in this thin atmosphere, has Easterners sucking for air before they’re halfway down.
The tops of Lone Mountain and Big Rock Tongue offer up some steep and deep runs, wide-open drops suitable for advanced blue-level skiers.
Bump-hounds head for War Dance and Mad Wolf on the back side of Andesite Mountain, where they ski the kinds of moguls Easterners usually only dream about - huge, rounded and soft enough for an easy turn on top.
For beginners, there is decent terrain off the Explorer Chair, where new skiers can work with instructors in the relative obscurity of their own area, unsullied by advanced skiers booming through as they do in some less-well-designed mountains.
All told, Big Sky has roughly 50 runs - either trails or open chutes and bowl-drops - down its very impressive 2,800-foot vertical rise. And another nice stat: The place gets more than 400 inches of natural snow per year.
The village around Big Sky has a dozen restaurants and bars for apres-ski activities, and a rather mediumpitched night life on weekends. The resort has about 120 condo units as well as the Huntley Lodge with its self-contained pool, saunas, ice rink and gym.
Big Sky is less than an hour’s drive from the Bozeman Airport.
MEMO: For more information, call Big Sky at (406) 995-4211.