The place
Lone Peak, an 11,166 ft pyramid in the Madison Range, with a tram to its summit and the resort on every side of it. The Big Couloir drops off the top on a sign-out with the patrol, two skiers every 15 minutes; it was first skied in June 1973. The freeride contests are held in the Headwaters.
Off-piste Past the resort's boundary nothing is controlled or patrolled: avalanche terrain, your own risk.
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The lines
Every line here, with how hard it is.
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The Big Couloir
■■■■■Big Sky's signature line, off the north side of Lone Peak's summit: sign out at the patrol shack by the tram's top with a beacon and a partner, two skiers every fifteen minutes, then a 50° entrance and a rock-walled couloir with a dogleg, 1,400 ft into the Bowl.
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The North Summit Snowfield
■■■■■Moonlight's summit line, the second of the peak's three managed-access areas: sign out at the shack, drop off the summit ridge onto the north face, pick a way between its rock bands, and follow Great Falls down to Deepwater Bowl.
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Liberty Bowl to Mountain Village
■■■■■The easiest way off Lone Peak, and the longest: the Yeti Traverse from the tram's top to Liberty Bowl, a single-black bowl down the summit's south side to the Dakota chair, then Screaming Left and Skittles Road round the mountain's foot to Mountain Village, about 3,700 ft and 6 km.
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Marx
■■■■■The longest of the south-east face's chutes off the Yeti Traverse, named, like Lenin, Castro's and the Dictator Chutes beside it, for a dictator: rock-lined and sunny, down to the Shedhorn chair.
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Lenin
■■■■■A south-east chute from just under the summit, off the end of Otter Slide, to the top of the Shedhorn chair.
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The Dictator Chutes
■■■■■Reached from Lenin's top by a traverse west along the face: a row of narrow rock chutes falling south-east to the Shedhorn chair.
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Castro's
■■■■■The westernmost of the dictators' chutes and the only triple black among them: a tight line between rock walls, with a cliff band beside its foot.
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The 1st Gully
■■■■■The first of six numbered rock gullies under the summit, reached by the Gullies Traverse from Marx, nearest the Big Couloir: a classic double black falling east-north-east into the Bowl, the tram's cables to the south.
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The 4th Gully
■■■■■Gullies 4 to 6 are triple blacks, corniced, roped off and opened only when patrol says: a choke just over a ski length wide above a hanging snowfield, then tight rocky entrances to the lower gully, more exposed than the 3rd, out to Turkey Traverse.
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Upper Pinnacles
■■■■■A 15 to 20 minute walk from the Challenger chair along the A-Z ridge, a sawtooth of pointed rocks with Moonlight on one side and the Bowl on the other, to the looker's-left line through the Pinnacles: pinches between rocks, about 45°.
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Jack Creek
■■■■■The Headwaters' most obvious central chute, in Zone 2 of the cirque: from the saddle where the bootpack's gear cache sits, 38° to 50° and 1,200 to 1,400 ft north into Stillwater Bowl, where the freeride contests finish.
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Whitetail
■■■■■Zone 3, the cirque's steepest: up to 52° and 1,500 ft from a top at 10,240 ft, the longest of the Headwaters' lines, down past 4th Class and 1st Fork to Stillwater Bowl.
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Three Forks
■■■■■The far end of the Headwaters bootpack: three forks off the ridge joining above a long apron into Stillwater Bowl, among the best in-bounds lines in Montana.
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Upper Obsidian
■■■■■The cirque's west end, from Lone Tree's side: corniced ridges, chutes and cliffs falling north-east.
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Firehole
■■■■■Zone 1 of the Headwaters, nearest the lift: a direct fall line from about 10,000 ft that narrows at its steepest, 37° to 44° and 1,050 ft to the Stillwater Traverse.
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Big Rock Tongue
■■■■■Off the top of Challenger, Big Sky's original steeps lift (1988): rock outcrops and chutes falling east-north-east, the second step of the patrol's progression to the Big Couloir.
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Horseshoe
■■■■■Moonlight's long blue, from the top of the Lone Tree chair round under the North Summit Snowfield's run-outs and down the valley to Madison Base, about 4 km.
