Big Sky Resort is the central clearing office through which me made our reservation for a week of skiing, so I’m a bit confused by its ranking of 6 out of 14 hotels in Big Sky. As far as I could tell, their office handles all reservations for all hotel rooms and condos on the mountain. The base village has two large hotels and several condo complexes, all seemingly managed by the Resort. We are a family of 4 with two teenage boys, both of whom are superb skiers. My husband and I are your basic conservative middle-aged skiers, looking to return home in one piece. We flew into Bozeman without a problem and took a reserved shuttle out to the mountain (about a 1 hour trip). We had been told not to bother to rent a car. That was a mistake, largely due to the almost total inaccessibility of restaurants and grocery stores. We were assigned to a condo in The Stillwater Condo Complex, which is owned and managed by the Huntley Lodge. Huntley is the older of the two hotels directly at the base of the mountain. Fortunately, we had friends who had rented a large condo at the Summit. The Stillwater Condos are in dire need of remodeling. Our condo, a one bedroom with a twin-bedded sleeping loft, had a kitchen and living room/dining area with TV and a partial view of the mountain (but mostly of other condos). The decorating was 1960’s discount motel style. The kitchen was poorly outfitted, which turned out not to matter much since grocery shopping was so challenging as to not be worthwhile. I purchased some basics at a grocery store on the way out by ordering ahead, not knowing that the condo didn’t even provide sugar, salt or paper products. I gratefully accepted hand-outs from our friend at The Summit. The cleaning service, for what it was worth (2 friendly young boys who obviously were there for the skiing), came on odd days and engaged in a half-hearted cleaning effort consistent with their age. At 8,000 feet, I didn’t enjoy the steep and sometimes icy 10 minute uphill hike to the base in ski boots with skis on my shoulder. My older son, who is in great shape, minded the roundtrip hike enough to take off his ski boots for lunch in the slope-side hotel. His boots were stolen, an experience entirely new to our family, despite having traveled to junior downhill races throughout New England. The local police seemed to feel that we should have expected that from college students (University of Montana was on vacation). There is no base lodge, per se. The hotel, Summit Lodge, however, is directly at the base and has an elegant dining room open to the public for lunch and dinner. Other than that, it was pizza in the outdoor plaza or a long wait at one of the couple of bar and burger joints at the base. The Summit had a beautiful outdoor pool where our boys swam with their friends, but it was not open to the public. Ski conditions were terrible, but that, obviously, was entirely beyond the control of mountain management. My biggest gripe is the relative lack of choice for dining, shopping and non-ski activities. In fact, the “mountain village” is really just a collection of sorry looking shops and bars, with a couple of very tired restaurants. If you want a good meal at something other than a large hotel dining room, you need to travel many miles off mountain in your own car or in one of the buses provided by the restaurants or town. They run, although not frequently, on a schedule. As seamless as this was made to sound to me on the phone, it was not and, suffice it to say that we ate off mountain only once and were, all in all, very disappointed in après ski vacation time. I took the mountain bus into the town of Big Sky one day for something to do when the ski conditions were dangerously icy and had a hard time filling up the hour between bus arrivals. I tried to arrange a trip for us to Yellowstone Park but was told that the park was closed for the season. I don’t recall the price difference between the Summit and the Huntley complexes. It was enough to discourage me from wanting to reserve a condo in the Summit. We left feeling perplexed as to what, really, is so special about Big Sky, relieved for having generous friends at the Summit and knowing that we would probably never return.