I was faced with this decision last year and even though the facts have been made clear so many times, let me cover it again.
Big sky:
Getting there
Hour drive or free hour and a half bus ride 7 days a week. Your skis and get put under the bus so they get beat up a bit and the bus is packed on busy weekends. I never couldnt get on a bus when i was using it to go skiing but some people have told me about the bus being full and having to wait an extra hour to get the next bus but it is really rare.
Park
Big sky's park is no breck or keystone or PC no one will argue that, but I though the park features last year were pretty good. They had nice small and medium sized jumps, 4 medium to large size rails. and maybe 10 small to medium boxes and rails. They also had a pipe that was not amazing but it was pretty good. The park at big sky is still being determined as to what they are going to do with it next year however, so there could be big changes.
Terrain
Big sky has lots of flat cruisers, but there are lots of fun features off the sides of those funs if you go explore, big sky also has a sick tram that usually has a short line and gets you to some nice steaps. Challanger lift is also a good lift if you like to ski bumps or pow and gives you a short hike to some chutes. Big sky also has mostly express lifts.
Vibe
Big sky is a resort but does not have much at all for night life and if you ski there all the time you will get to know some people and it has some what of a core vibe once you navigate your way through the all the visitors.
Bridger
Getting there
Bridger is a 25 miniute drive and they have free buses on the weekends
Park
Bridger really puts very little effort into there park and for a park in the rockies I would plan and simple call it bad.
Terrain
Bridger has sick terrain off the ridge fo sho. I was never there on a pow day but I was told the lift line was crazy long to get to the ridge but that might also be because there were not as many pow days last year as years past. Bridger does not have any express lifts and other than the ridge is pretty flat and much smaller and shorter runs than big sky.
You did not mention moonlight into the equation which has the headwaters for steaps and lots of cool jibs in there park but usually only one or two jumps that aren't much to speak of. Someone actually hit someone on a chair last year on a poorly made jump under a lift. But the jibs at moonlight are sick. You can access both moonlight and big sky with a lone peak pass. Now what you have to consider is money. In order of how expensive they are: Lone peak, Big sky, Moonlight, Bridger. I think Moonlight might actually be cheaper than bridger if you buy it at the right time. There are also all kinds of frequent skier cards you can buy for the different mountains.
Personaly for next year I will buy a Lone peak pass and the College frequent skier card at Bridger for when friends go there and I want to ski with them it only costs 30 bucks.
