Ultra-luxe hotel brand One&Only has announced plans to build its first United States property adjacent to Big Sky Resort. The development will include 73 hotel rooms, 19 villas and 62 private homes in the Lee’s Poole section of Moonlight Basin. A detachable gondola will link the One&Only ski lodge to the existing Madison base area on acreage owned by Lone Mountain Land Company. “One&Only Moonlight Basin will be connected by gondola to Big Sky’s world-class skiing with over 5,800 skiable acres, and will provide access to unparalleled mountain golf courses, and limitless outdoor opportunities,” said One&Only and Lone Mountain Land in a joint press release. “This new, secluded One&Only will showcase Montana’s mountains, unsurpassed scenery, and abundant wildlife, while providing every modern amenity, making the remote retreat a truly exclusive experience.”
The two-way gondola will span approximately 3,500 feet with a modest vertical rise of about 200 feet. Renderings suggest a Doppelmayr lift with Omega V cabins, though no supplier was specified.
Formed in 2014, Lone Mountain Land Company owns approximately 8,000 acres in Moonlight Basin as well as the Spanish Peaks development on the opposite side of Big Sky Resort. The Moonlight master plan includes up to seven additional lifts to the north and west of Lone Tree and Six Shooter.
Reservations for One&Only Moonlight Basin are expected to open in summer 2023 with the resort welcoming its first guests in 2024.
Lift Blog 
Artwork suggests that this will be a Uni-G Vision, do they still make those? Or is it just for the art?
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I think it’s just the art. It’s more likely to be a D-Line, and the River Run Gondola will continue to bear the distinction of being the only Uni-G Vision installation in the United States.
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Uni-G line is still being manufactured by Doppelmayr worldwide, so it’s a possibility. But unlikely.
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Tell me
Will the gondola be:
A:Uni-G
B:Uni-GV
C:D-Line
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It’ll be a gondola :)
I’ll get a good laugh if it’s an LPA with Sigma cabins, mainly because Doppelmayr seems to be the default artwork when development companies talk about ski lifts. I have no preference or interest either way.
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It would be highly unlikely to be anything other than a Doppelmayr. I believe the land company reached an agreement with Boyne to source from Doppelmayr, I know we did engineering for two lifts but this agreement was made after the engineering contract so we ended up losing out on building them.
I too saw the headline and was stoked; till I was immediately disappointed to see it was another real estate lift.
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Is this a Big Sky project or a One&only project?
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Not a Big Sky Resort/Boyne project. Similar to some of the other recent lodging access lifts (Highlands, Jayhawk, Stagecoach.)
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Like other recent lodging access lifts in that a regular Big Sky lift ticket will allow access?
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Will it be installed summer 2023?
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Bummer. I was hoping this was an announcement as to the replacement of Six Shooter. Instead another shuttle lift that does not improve the skiing experience.
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It certainly changes the priority list though. I would imagine Sixer, Iron Horse, and Lone Tree upgrades look a lot more appealing right now. Potentially even Derringer, given that most of Big Sky’s ultra wealthy competition have at least a high speed quad for a beginner lift.
Still need that Explorer replacement first IMO.
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Six Shooter can already get a pretty long line and this will just make the problem bigger.
The top priority really needs to be to get an additional lift out of Madison, preferably all the way to the top of lone tree like moonlight planned to do before bankruptcy. Not only will it help with lines at the base of six shooter, but it will also make all of the lone tree terrain more accessible.
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The Six Shooter will be replaced after the redevelopment of the Madison Base.
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If that Moonlight Basin master plan comes to pass, it would be….sub-optimal utilization of the terrain west of the current core of that area. Mostly just a bunch of real estate lifts on low angle terrain that doesn’t reach anything interesting and unnecessarily splits the terrain into multiple smaller pods that don’t really work together.
Click to access Moonlight-Basin-Property-Map.pdf
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I agree. The 2 pods on the development plan don’t really make much sense.
Also, I don’t really get the 2 lifts within the current lone tree area. Neither of them seem overly useful and lone tree would still be needed to access the majority of that terrain. It would be far more effective to build one where the lift line is already cut from the base of sixer to the top of lone tree
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Is there confirmation this lift will be a proper D-Line gondola and not a pulse lift? I know the renderings show a normal gondola, but as others have noted, artistic renderings are not the most reliable source.
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There is a new map for the Moonlight master plan. It has a few interesting changes on it…
1. The location of One & Only and the alignment of the connecting gondola are both shown. On the Madison village side it looks like it will unload adjacent to Jayhawk. Also, it appears there will be a mid station with a slight angle change.
2. On the old map there was a second out of base lift that looked like it would offload near the top of Ice House. That lift is gone from the new map. The second lift in the current Lone Tree pod is still shown, but the alignment looks pretty useless
3. The two lower Moonlight lifts below Six Shooter have both been removed from the new map, but the ski runs are still marked. Not sure if we will still end up seeing this expansion or not.
New map link: https://www.moonlightbasin.com/wp-content/uploads/Hero-map_edited-small-1.16.23.pdf
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The link in Peter’s article still leads to the old map for comparison
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That still shows the old Tram alignment, so take it with a grain of salt. That looks more like a real estate sales plan, so that’s where the focus would be, not the real lifts.
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