Big Sky Mountain Sports School — Local services in Big Sky

For the 2nd straight year, my 4-year old and I have had a terrible experience with this ski school. From the moment you check-in, it's a poor experience. You're sent to the 'kids bowl' where you stand next to a flag and wait until someone approaches you (a better experience would be 'Morning xyz, you're paired with xyz and she's excited to meet you outside'). At this point, very little is discussed about goals or what we're seeking out of this full day of ski school. I had only a brief discussion about my daughter's ability level. From there, I witnessed them sending the kids down the hill with little to no instruction (no skiing backwards with them, or skiing alongside them).

I paid more than $300 for a full day lesson, only to get a text from the instructor at 1:20pm to come visit (two hours before the end of the lesson). The instructor informed me that my child was 'disrespectful' and 'not listening.' I fully understand that my daughter was frustrated (which I confirmed in speaking with her about her emotions afterwards). I would have expected more empathy, patience and guidance from the instructor. She's the adult and expert and the one who should be responding to these frustrations by finding a way to teach and educate my daughter, and work through these episodes of frustration. I was successfully able to spend time the last two days with my daughter to get her to be more in balance and get her to demonstrate improvement in her form.

In closing, if you have young children, do not spend the money on this 'puppy mill,' where they take in kids and provide very little coaching or guidance. Another recommendation and area of improvement is to provide a recap or even a brief write-up of what went well and what we should focus on moving forward (for this amount of money, I would have expected a summary of how the day went). For adults, I can see the benefit, but for 3 and 4 year old kids, the instructors don't have the patience or guiding hand for the kids to benefit from this experience. We will not be using this ski school again, and I strongly recommend others with young children to save their money and not use...

My wife and I decided to go and try skiing for the first time over Christmas week. We originally booked a group lesson but seeing how it was our first time we opted to go with a private instructor. How very glad we are that we did, Max our instructor was absolutely phenomenal! He was fun to be around, funny, knowledgeable, PATIENT, and he’s from Austria, which is pretty cool.

We started the first day and progressed but my wife took a little longer and was struggling with it… we took the next day off and she decided we had to give it another go and wanted to do one more private lesson, we signed up and asked in the office if there was any way to get Max again, and she said she would put in the request, the next morning it was none other than Max! We were very thrilled, he worked with my Wife in the AM and she progressed off the bunny hill to her first ski lift run and she really enjoyed it. But she was tired and decided to stop after lunch, so Max and I went down the Explorer then he decided it was time to go up the Swifty! Big ski lift for the 2nd day! But boy was I glad we did, it was fantastic, did I fall, yes haha but I learned so much and had an absolute blast. So again, thank you Max and if you’re trying to decide whether a lesson is right for you, do it! It will...

Big Sky Montana is simply the best. We have two 12 year olds and one 7 year old. We decided many years ago we wanted to ski as a family. In order to do that all of our kids needed to learn quickly but correctly. We hired Patrick for the first time 2 years ago. At that time our youngest skied greens and blues. He was absolutely amazing with her but honestly with our whole family. The older two learned some tricks like jumping, yo-yoing, and terrain park playing. In the meantime our youngest got faster and more sure of herself. This year we hired him again except the day we hoped to have him was his day off. Regrettably we hired a different instructor to join us for the day. To our surprise when we showed up that morning there was Patrick!! After working 14 days straight he gave up his one day off to coach our family yet again. We just couldn’t recommend someone greater. He is fun, knowledgeable, careful, and amazing with all ages. We skied many black mogle tree trails and most of the time our seven year old beat my husband and I to the bottom. We are incredibly thankful for Patrick. Our kids know how to ski correctly and safely only because of him. If u want a family vacation to remember, hire Patrick, you will...