My last visit to Big Sky was in 2019, just a year before the world changed. While our most recent previous stays had been at The Summit condos, our 2019 stay and our stay this year was at the Huntley Lodge, a hotel. This building was the original lodging at the resort and is located right at the base. Our club has been trying to get back to Big Sky ever since our last visit, but employee housing has become such a difficult thing that one entire wing of the hotel has been given over to housing the workers. That’s made getting reservations quite difficult. However, this year our club attended as part of a larger group from our ski council and with roughly 175 guests we were finally able to secure rooms.
The lodge underwent renovations in 2021, so I was excited to see the upgrades since our last visit. The lobby is mostly the same and the common areas got some new carpet and wallpaper but I’ll concentrate this review on the hotel room itself.
Guest Room
The wing that is open for guests has a fairly long hallway with a dogleg about halfway down. Our room was right in the “outside” part of the dogleg. That meant the room’s layout was different from a standard rectangle hotel room and also gave us a bit more floor space, which was nice.
The bathroom was immediately on the left when entering the room. The bathroom in this configuration is not as large as the one we had in the more standard rooms but it was fine. The sink was on the right side and positioned slightly to the right, so you didn’t have to worry about squeezing between the counter and the toilet. There were two sets of ceiling lights: one over the mirror and one for the room in general, including over the shower stall. In addition, there was a button in the lower middle portion of the mirror that backlit it, though we didn’t use that at all. Though you can’t see it in the photo below, there was a make-up mirror on a wall-mounted arm that could swing out from the wall and tilt as needed. It had its own light, which was quite helpful.
Huntley Lodge Bathroom
On the left side of the room, behind the door, was the shower stall. The door pushed into the shower and the water controls were on the back wall of the shower. That was nice because I’d tilt the showerhead to point to the side wall while the water warmed up and could wait to step under it. It took me about half the week to realize that the showerhead did have an adjustable spray, so I was able to change it for myself and change it back for my roommate who was barely 5-feet tall and couldn’t reach it!
Also, hooray for the bar in the back corner of the shower. That was most helpful for shaving my legs. It was a tiny bit tall for me and I imagine was quite difficult for my tiny roommate to use but I do appreciate having it.
The wall-mounted toiletries were from ROAM and were fine.
Huntley Lodge Toiletries
In the living space we had two queen beds.
Huntley Lodge Queen Beds. All standard rooms have 2Q. There are no rooms with just a king bed.
There was a central nightstand in between the beds (with dual electric and USB-A outlets) and a smaller nightstand on the outer sides of the beds that also had electric and USB-A outlets as well as a wall-mounted reading light. Kudos for having plenty of electrical outlets and USB outlets by the beds!
Kudos for having so many outlets near the bed
Because of the odd shape of the room, we had a large amount of floor space at the foot of our beds. The unit across from the beds had a wardrobe at one end, four drawers in the middle, and at the right end had two cabinets that held a safe and a shelf on one side and a mini-fridge on the other. A Keurig machine sat atop the mini-fridge and there was a basket containing mini-bar items that we did not touch. Two shelves were available above that as well. The wardrobe had plenty of hanger; however far too many of them had clips for pants or skirts. I can’t imagine someone needing more than one or two of those. In my opinion almost all of the hangers should have had the wooden cross bars for hanging pants on them. Some hangers had no crossbar at all. But they were all good quality and thankfully were regular hangers and not the kind where one part stays on the hanging bar to keep them from disappearing into guests’ luggage. Two terry cloth robes were provided which were handy for going to and from the hot tub and pool.
Huntley Lodge Guest Room
Against the far wall was a seating area with two chairs, an ottoman and a small table between the chairs. I kinda commandeered this area and would end up leaving some clothes here rather than trying to hang them up. Some ski gear is kinda puffy and it makes a closet more full than it might be otherwise.
Huntley Lodge Guest Room Seating
Laundry
The laundry is one area that received an upgrade. There were four pairs of washers and dryers and they were often in use. As a bonus, they were free to use and the hotel provided pods of detergent as well as dryer sheets! This was wonderful and it was so nice to be able to come home with a large amount of clean clothes.
Huntley Lodge Laundry Room
In the end
The upgrades were definitely needed and I’m generally pleased with what was done. The soundproofing could still use some work as I’d swear the folks above us clomped around in their ski boots all the time! But I recognize that’s not a cheap or easy thing. The Huntley is still the best place to stay if you can’t get into the (now more costly) Summit condos and I’d be happy to stay here again.
2B Traveling 
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