The Douglas-firs above LakeLodge start moving around ten in the morning, when the thermals kick up off Ulery's and the aspens on the lower Jack Creek benches show their pale undersides. By then most of the residents who planned on a trail day are already on one. The question they answered before coffee was not whether to go out. It was which loop.
Moonlight's private trail network is small enough that you can memorize it in a season and varied enough that the choice actually matters. Each of the five loops that most residents rotate through has a distinct grade, a distinct view, and, more usefully, a distinct place it deposits you at the end.
The choice isn't the trail, it's the last hour
A loop on this system is really a decision about how you want the last hour of your day to look. Elk Knob ends you above Moonlight Creek, an easy roll down to a shower. Ulery's Lake Loop puts you at a beach with a canoe rack. Madison Loop drops you back at Madison Village with enough time left to make a tee at The Reserve. The Otter Slide and Otter Way connectors don't end at Moonlight at all; they hand you off to the Big Sky Resort bike network and change the shape of the afternoon entirely.
Read the trails that way and the map stops looking like a menu of exercise and starts looking like a menu of endings.
Five loops, five endings
Ulery's Lake Loop, if you want a beach afterward
The interpretive trail around Ulery's is the one most residents underrate because they walk past it every week. It's a flat circuit with views of Lone Mountain and the Spanish Peaks, and in July the lake surface goes yellow with pond lilies. It's easy enough that a house full of guests can do it without gear, and short enough that the day still has room in it.
The ending is the point. You finish at the lake edge, which means Ulery's Lake Camp is a fifty-yard walk. Fire pit, canoes, a treehouse for the kids, cutthroat rising if you brought a rod, and Carpe Diem Cafe within eyeshot for a coffee that finishes the morning cleanly. Moonlight Outfitters is on the same footprint if someone in the group decides mid-morning they want a paddleboard.
Elk Knob, if you want a real hike but not a big one
Elk Knob is the newer addition. Three miles, intermediate, open in summer only, with a climb that gives you Lone Peak on one side and Cedar and Fan on the other before wandering down toward Moonlight Creek. It's the loop residents send visiting parents on when they want the "we did a Montana hike" photo without committing to a Beehive-scale day.
Because it drops you back into the residential core rather than the lake, the natural ending is Three Forks at LakeLodge for a late lunch, or a hot tub at home if you've been out long enough that the calves are honest with you.
Madison Loop, if you're on the bike
Madison Loop is 3.9 miles, summer-only, starting and ending at Madison Village. It hikes well, but the reason to know it is that it's the bike loop most residents build their morning around when they want a real ride that stays inside the gate. Banked turns, a rhythm you can settle into, and a return leg back to the same trailhead where you left the car or the e-bike charger.
Ending at Madison Village means you are already close to the lifts. In summer this matters less than in winter, but the geography is the reason Madison Loop pairs naturally with a Reserve tee time in the afternoon. Bike in the morning, shower at the house, twelfth-hole comfort cabin by four.
Elkhorn, if you want the Spanish Peaks view without the crowd
Elkhorn is a 2.2-mile out-and-back that climbs steeply toward the top of the 6-Shooter lift. It is the shortest loop on this list and, by vertical, the most demanding. What you get for it is a Spanish Peaks view that most Big Sky trail-tickers never see, because they're standing at Beehive with fifty other people.
The right ending for Elkhorn is not a lodge. It's the porch, or a bench above Moonlight Creek, and a lot of water. It's a training loop as much as a scenic one. Residents who run it usually run it before breakfast and are on to the rest of the day by nine.
Otter Slide and Otter Way, if you're leaving the neighborhood
Here is where the trail system stops being a closed loop and starts functioning as a gate. Otter Slide is a downhill bike flow trail. Otter Way is a multi-directional multi-use trail. In summer, both connect Moonlight's private network directly into Big Sky Resort's bike trails.
That connection is the piece of the map that changes what kind of day you can have. If you take Otter Way out, your options expand to include:
- Full-mountain descents that end at Madison Base rather than at Ulery's
- Cross-mountain rides that let you have lunch at the resort and then loop home
- A one-way ride with a shuttle back, which is a very different day than a there-and-back on Madison Loop
The reason to name Otter Slide and Otter Way specifically is that most guides collapse them into "connects to Big Sky Resort," which is true and useless. Otter Slide flows one direction. Otter Way flows both. On a Saturday when the resort side is busy, Otter Way is the smarter return line because you're not fighting downhill traffic on a shared corridor.
The parts of the map worth memorizing
The rest is texture, but a few points are worth knowing without pulling up the map on your phone.
Moonlight publishes roughly sixteen miles of trail accessible from the community base, with Ulery's Loop as the four-mile hike out to the lake if you're starting from farther in the community rather than from the lake edge itself. That distance is the reason the Ulery's approach is a hike in some seasons and a bike-and-lock in others, depending on where in the community you live.
Cedar Mountain Corrals runs guided horseback rides that don't stay on the loops at all, using Lee Metcalf Wilderness, Beehive Basin, North Fork drainage, and Bear Basin as their working geography. If a group in the house wants an animal under them rather than a bike, that's the alternative to naming.
What One&Only added to the summer count
Since November 2025, the summer trail conversation at Moonlight has quietly gotten a second layer. One&Only opened with two small private alpine lakes called Lee's Pools, and its summer programming there includes hiking, mountain biking, fly fishing, and paddleboarding. For residents, the practical read is that the ski shop that fit your boots in February converts to a fly-fishing outfitter each spring, staffed by the same people. That's a continuity of relationship that matters more than another amenity on a brochure.
The other consequence is one to plan around rather than celebrate. Big Sky was named Expedia's top trending destination for 2026, on the back of 13.7 million visitors to Montana in 2024. Trailheads inside the gate are the same size they were last summer. The volume of people who now know about them is not. The loops that used to feel private on a Saturday at ten still feel private at seven.
The through-line
If you live here, the map is not a list of hikes. It's a way of shaping a day. Ulery's Lake Loop is a morning that ends in water. Elk Knob is a hike that ends at Three Forks. Madison Loop is a ride that ends at the tee. Elkhorn is a workout that ends on your own porch. Otter Way is a decision to leave the neighborhood and come back a different way.
The residents who use the system best pick the ending first and let the trail follow.
For a conversation about the homes that sit closest to these trailheads, or about what's coming to market inside Moonlight this summer, Life in Big Sky Real Estate is here for it. Live Big. Connect with our team.
