3 months ago
24
For all its natural good looks, the community of Big Sky in Montana is defined as much by the national park (Yellowstone) 45 minutes’ drive south of it, and the TV series starring Kevin Costner bearing the same name. The park’s not the only reason to come, it’s just a really good one.
Should you come to feel like you’re on set with Costner and co (the “set-jetters” among you): the ranch Yellowstone is set around doesn’t actually exist, and the one Hollywood uses is 300 kilometres north.
Never mind, Big Sky has a long history with the movies. Robert Redford used parts of this place to film his 1992 fly-fishing saga, A River Runs Through It, with Brad Pitt (the Norman Maclean book it was based on is set in Montana, but mainly around Missoula, four hours north-east). Redford came back to film The Horse Whisperer. Pitt returned for Legends Of The Fall.
Even its name is make-believe: the sky’s no bigger here, though with the prairies which roll out all the way to the Rockies, it looks like it might be. But there’s a lot of illusion to this place… it’s why Hollywood came.
Trey Braasch, my fly-fishing guide, has seen it all in his 28 years in town. “If I had a dollar for every person who came here to fish because of A River Runs Through It, I wouldn’t be teaching you how to fish in this river right now,” he says (the number of tourists coming to fly fish in Montana doubled within a year of the film).
I’m in chest-high waders, balanced carefully along the rocky bottom of the fast-flowing Gallatin River. All around me, rock canyons rise at right angles. I get an almost instant strike – and feel like Brad Pitt with this big flapping fish on the line. There’s the magic of Big Sky for you. “You know he had a fishing double, don’t you?” Braasch says, as if that matters.
And yet despite the Hollywood effect, Big Sky is still most popular for its ski mountain in the winter months. The shoulder months before and after summer are overlooked, especially by international travellers. When I arrive in town in early June, there are hardly any other travellers, and certainly no Australians.
There’s barely even a town to Big Sky, the ranch half a kilometre further up the mountain from it doubles as Big Sky’s communal gathering place. Cowboy ranches are a dime a dozen in this part of Montana, but Lone Mountain Ranch has been here as long as cowboys have. It’s bigger than Costner’s ranch, but this is Costner’s Dutton Ranch to me.
There are horses corralled where I drink my coffee each morning, and each Tuesday night from June to September, hundreds gather at the top of the property for a rodeo. It doesn’t get dark until after 10 and when it gets close, I take a walk from the rodeo through yellow wildflowers to watch the sun sink below Lone Peak, the 3500-metre-high mountain which dominates the skyscape here.
When it’s my turn to ride, I take sloping trails across the property, between herds of elk and their few-days’-old babies, watching for black bears and their new cubs. I don’t see any, but the next day on a short hiking trail to a waterfall just beyond town limits, a grizzly bear walks across the trail in front of me, forcing a retreat to the car park.
I’m staying in a lodge on the way to Yellowstone National Park, just 15 minutes out of town. Even so, there’s still only a handful of guests staying here. Being closer to the national park is part of the reason I’m staying at Rainbow Ranch Lodge.
I’m picked up early morning in a van and driven through wilderness, along a road without a single car on it. Technically, we’re already in the park as we head south, passing beneath mountain ranges and through sub-alpine forest and between Montana and Wyoming, but we don’t hit the formal park entrance until we pass through the town of West Yellowstone.
If only I’d known to shut my eyes, I might’ve missed the conglomeration of fast food chains and (not so) cheap motels. It’s as good a reason as any to choose Big Sky as a base: America has a habit of creating God-awful tourist towns on the edges of its best natural assets.
And Yellowstone National Park is arguably its very best. Nearly a million hectares of wilderness, this is North America’s most intact ecosystem, home to half the world’s active geysers and one of three super-volcanoes in the US. There are also 7000 bison, 20,000 elk and over 200 grizzlies living here and every one of them can create a traffic jam for kilometres.
But guide Matt Macoy promises to miss them all, and takes us down little-used roadways alongside rivers and meadows where wild creatures roam, minus the crowds. When we take to more popular routes, he switches plans when he spots a coach load of tourists. We duck and weave between heavier traffic – sometimes down dirt roads beside steaming geysers and calm, blue lakes.
We circle back to places we’ve been before, then leave again if we still can’t beat the rush. And then - when I’m dizzy just trying to work out where we’ve been – I’m standing in a green meadow in a huge valley with my face in the sun watching a grizzly bear and her cubs play-fight across a narrow creek. Beside them is a bull bison. The park’s star performers – and there’s not a soul around. Quite the feat in a park where 5 million people visit each year.
We spend the day – and the next – discovering the best parts of the park under the noses of the coach passengers, and all those Winnebagos. But even among the grandeur in the world’s first national park, I’m happy to escape each afternoon, back along the Gallatin Highway to Big Sky, and my lodge beside a slow-moving river which I watch from my back verandah. On the other side of it, a sign warns about grizzlies - I can be at danger here, minus the crowds.
The next evening, I take an ex-army truck up winding trails through the conifers of the ski resort for a long, slow dinner in a yurt. And I board a hot air balloon just beyond the town limits to see how high the Rocky Mountains really are in this part of Montana, and for a rare view of a secret community built for America’s wealthiest people: the Yellowstone Club (whose members include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Ben Affleck). I won’t meet any of them – nor will I mingle with Costner, or Brad Pitt – but out here among all this make-believe, I never give up hope.
The details
Stay
Rainbow Ranch Lodge has rooms beside the Gallatin River from $US315 a night, including daily breakfast and ranch-to-table restaurant, Wild Caddis, rainbowranchbigsky.com
Play
Take a horse ride or guided hike, and lunch at farm-to-table restaurant, Horn & Cantle; check out rodeos every Tuesday night from June through September for $US175. See lonemountainranch.com
Guided half-day fly-fishing on the Gallatin River $US480. See montanaflyfishing.com
Small group day tours of Yellowstone NP with pick-up from $US350. See yellowstonesafari.com
Hot air balloon ride over town $US379. See montanaballoon.com
Take a 4WD trip for a secluded yurt dinner from $US149. See bigskyyurt.com
Fly
Delta Air Lines fly to LA daily from Australia then direct to Bozeman, Montana from $1298 USD, delta.com, all major rental car companies operate from the airport (it’s an hour’s drive to Big Sky).
The writer travelled courtesy of Visit Big Sky and Brand USA.
