Updated September 25, 2026 11:54AM
The sun hits the horses just right. The day’s first light comes through a notch in the canyon and settles on the stables where dozens of horses mill around inside a fence. The wranglers are there too, in their denim and leather boots, tending to the large animals. A narrow lawn separates the porch I’m sitting on from the stables below, and the broad beam of light sets the whole scene aglow for a few minutes, like a spotlight on a stage, before slowly expanding up the lush lawn towards the main lodge and my porch.
I’m not alone here. A handful of guests wake up before dawn to catch this scene each morning, quietly drinking coffee on the front porch. They’re still and contemplative, the way art enthusiasts study a painting in a museum. This is a typical morning at Mountain Sky Guest Ranch, a high-end dude ranch tucked into Paradise Valley, just outside of Yellowstone National Park.
The horses are a big draw for guests here. You can go on multiple trail rides daily, or even practice working with cattle from the saddle. But these quiet moments on the porch are just as enticing. There is no cell service on the property, and no Wi-Fi in the cabins. There’s only one TV all the way down on the edge of the property in the golf shop. And that lack of connectivity is exactly how guests of Mountain Sky Guest Ranch like it. You could spend an entire week at this dude ranch and never have to look at a screen.
Inside the “Deadzoning” Travel Trend
This lack of connectivity is becoming one of the more popular amenities at luxury lodges like Mountain Sky. These destinations offer next-level food and incredible adventures, all in a gorgeous setting, as well as an opportunity to step away from the endless scrolling and an overflowing inbox. It’s the latest travel trend called “deadzoning,” where travelers seek out destinations where they can detox from their digital lives and engage in more analog pursuits.
And it doesn’t get more analog than Mountain Sky Guest Ranch, a 17,000-acre dude ranch offering classic Western activities and adventures like trail rides, fly fishing, archery, clay shooting…even two-step and line dancing on some evenings. Oh, and they do it all while providing high-end luxuries like five-course dinners, craft cocktails and plush private cabins. You get to live the Wild West dream but in complete comfort. There’s even a championship golf course on the edge of the property, if that’s your thing.
Ride horses, catch fish, play golf, and ignore emails…It’s an enticing combination that I had to check out in person, even though the idea of putting my phone away for days at a time gives me mild anxiety. How can the world possibly carry on if I can’t answer my emails or check Instagram?
A Camp Experience for Adults
Mountain Sky has been a working dude ranch for almost 100 years, welcoming guests for the first time in 1929. It was more rustic until Arthur Blank, co-founder of Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, purchased the property in 2001 and started enhancing the facilities.
The ranch begins near the edge of the Yellowstone River, in Paradise Valley, and climbs in elevation deeper into the mountains until it meets the rugged Gallatin National Forest. The heart of the property is carved out of a narrow canyon along the trout-rich Big Creek, with 16 private cabins surrounding a main lodge and its adjoining lawns and a wellness center with a yoga studio and grotto-like indoor pools. But the ranch is expansive, with 17,000 acres of high-elevation pastures and mountain tops rising from that lush, narrow valley along Big Creek. Trail rides and hikes start at the lodge and venture outward. The shooting range is a short, curvy drive along a dirt road up the side of the canyon to a broad perch with an incredible view of Emigrant Peak, so you’re shooting flying clays with the mountains as a backdrop.
The whole endeavor has a camp vibe. Guests sign up for activities the night before on a bulletin board in the main lodge, choosing from experiences that range from archery classes to golf tee times. There are set meal times where the whole ranch convenes on the main lodge together. They even ring a dinner bell. And just like camp, long-lasting friendships are formed at Mountain Sky. Guests book a cabin for a week at a time a year in advance (starting at $3,500 per person for a studio cabin), and coordinate with other couples so they can reconvene in Montana each year. Spots at the resort are coveted from spring through fall. If you choose to miss a year, someone from the waiting list will snag your cabin and have first rights to sign up for that same week the following year. I talked to one gentleman who booked a cabin in advance even though he knew he and his wife wouldn’t be able to make it. They paid for the cabin, but left it empty, just so he wouldn’t lose his spot.
The conspicuous lack of the digital world contributes heavily to that camp vibe, as guests aren’t constantly checking their phones during conversations or retreating to their cabins after dinner to get some work done. Instead, they convene around one of the outdoor fire pits, or sit on their porches and talk.
Mountain Sky wasn’t designed as a deadzone destination, it’s just a happy circumstance given its location. There’s no service in this remote, narrow canyon. And there is WiFi in the main lodge which guests can tap into if they feel like they need a fix. I see a couple of people throughout my time at Mountain Sky checking game scores or sending emails, but most guests I talk to relish the lack of connectivity and lean into it during their stay.
“I think a lot of guests are apprehensive at first, but after a couple of days they seem to really love the fact that they don’t have constant access to the outside world,” says Mountain Sky’s operation manager, Alexa Andrews.
Even the ranch’s staff inevitably come to appreciate the forced time away from screens. The guides, cooks and ranch hands all live on the property and adhere to the same lack of connectivity as the guests. One young hiking guide from England tells me they play a lot of board games at night.
Imagine that. A bunch of 20-somethings sitting around and playing board games for months on end. It’s like we’ve stepped back in time.
One night, while sitting around a fire next to the ranch’s saloon, I talk to a couple from Mississippi who have been coming to the ranch for the last three years. I ask the husband if he ever thought about bringing a Starlink so he could have wifi in his cabin.
“I actually thought about that the first time we came out here, but I love the fact that nobody can get in touch with me. I told my business partners to deal with whatever comes up without me. I’m not working while I’m here. I’m just here. This is what I’m doing. It’s refreshing.”
And the time away from phones and laptops might actually be good for him, too. The average American spends more than five hours a day on their phone, which is contributing to all sorts of health issues from poor self-esteem to career burnout. A National Institues of Health meta-review of studies concerning phone use suggests a short digital detox can lead to a range of outcomes, from lowering stress and depression to enhancing sleep quality and overall life satisfaction.
From an aesthetic perspective, it’s also hard to feel like a cowboy or cowgirl when you’re checking Instagram from the saddle of a horse.
The Not-So Wild West
It’s been a long time since I’ve pretended to be a cowboy. There’s a picture of me when I was about six in full Wild West regalia, with red boots, a hat, and six-shooter on my hip. I wore that outfit daily until I outgrew it, and my family loved riding horses, so I have a lot of childhood memories in the saddle. But to be honest, I don’t love horses. They’re very large animals with their own ideas about things. Trying to ride them seems precarious at best.
So I decided to ease into my Wild West days at Mountain Sky Ranch with some fly fishing. I love getting out of my comfort zone, but if you can wade into the waters instead of diving headfirst (on the back of a horse) I highly recommend it.
The ranch has a small trout pond, just above the main lodge, where guides teach lessons to first-time casters. It’s a pretty setting with a mountain backdrop and stocked with plenty of large rainbows so new anglers can get the taste for success, but I want something a little more challenging so I sign up for a float trip down the Yellowstone River with one of Mountain Sky’s in-house fly-fishing guides.
The Yellowstone is the longest free-flowing river in the contiguous United States with nearly 700 miles of water without a single dam. The headwaters are inside the park, and the river is mostly narrow water passing through canyons and meadows as it creates waterfalls and small lakes as it moves through the park. It’s a wade-fishing hot spot, but my guide and I focus on a five-mile section of the Yellowstone outside of the park inside Paradise Valley, between the small towns of Gardiner and Livingston. Here, the river is wide and full of cutthroat, brown and rainbow trout. It passes through a broad valley full of ranches with the Absaroka Mountains on the horizon. This is bucket list water and I feel lucky to be able to cast a line as my guide paddles us slowly into the middle of the river.
I get nibbles right away, but have a hard time setting the hook as I work the edges of the river seeking out deep water. It’s windy and casting is a challenge, so I keep the line close to the boat and eventually pull in a large brown and a medium-sized rainbow. But the views are the real catch. There isn’t any snow on the peaks of the craggy Absarokas, which reach 13,000 feet as they line the border of Montana and Wyoming.
In the perfect Wild West dreamscape, we would cook the trout we caught over an open fire, but we release the fish back into the river and I settle for a multi-course meal back in the main lodge of Mountain Sky. It starts with a delicate beet salad with butter greens and ends with cheesecake with a sauce made from local huckleberries. There was bison tenderloin somewhere in the middle, too. Mountain Sky offers dedicated “meal rides” where you get a true Western experience by riding to a location and having a hearty meal cooked over an open fire, but there’s also nothing wrong with balancing an outdoor adventure with a bit of fine dining. We’re not animals, after all.
I spend the rest of my time at Mountain Sky trying to experience as many activities as the ranch offers. The golf course, Rising Sun, is routed through Paradise Valley with big views of the Absaroka Range and fun Wild West details like the occasional outhouse tucked into the back nine. I discover that I’m surprisingly good at shooting clays and get a lot of satisfaction out of seeing the tiny discs explode through the sight in my shotgun. But it’s the trail ride that catches me the most off guard.
My distrust in horses melts away within a few minutes of saddling up on Duke, a gentle steed who actually does what I ask him to do (more or less). We ride from the stable and start climbing immediately on a steep double track until we crest on a sloping pasture with 360-degree views. Emigrant Peak dominates one horizon, while the deep, dark canyons of Gallatin National Forest occupy another. We move slowly through the sage grass and aspens, letting the horses drink from a trough, and I ask the other riders about their time at Mountain Sky. All of them are here for these trail experiences. They ride two times a day, and have formed real bonds with the horses beneath them. They saddle up on the same animals year after year. Some will even send their adopted horses treats during the winter.
I find that I like the slow pace of the trail ride. We move at maybe three miles per hour, covering close to seven miles during one afternoon. We trot during a couple of open stretches, but mostly we’re meandering. I learn to trust Duke, even when we’re descending a steep, rocky section of trail close to the ranch. And I notice that nobody pulls their phone out to take a picture. Maybe it’s because we’re at the end of this group’s week, and they’ve taken all the pictures they want, or maybe it’s because the digital detox is working. Maybe they don’t automatically reach for their phone when they witness something amazing, like the view from a broad pasture of the Montana horizon from the saddle of their favorite horse. Maybe they’ve had enough time away from the digital world that they can enjoy this moment for what it is, and not feel obligated to capture it and share it with strangers.
Graham Averill is Outside magazine’s national parks columnist. He didn’t know what to expect from this dude ranch experience, but now totally gets the appeal, and is looking for a reason to wear cowboy boots and hat during his daily life back home.
