For as long as Spanish Peaks Mountain Club has existed, a day here has moved through one building. You wake up in a home tucked into the timber, you make your way to the Clubhouse perched on the 18th hole, and from there the day radiates out: breakfast in the dining room, the pro shop, the pool deck, dinner, the last drink before bed. The property runs to more than 5,700 acres, but the gravity has always pulled to one spot on it.
That stopped being entirely true two summers ago, and it's about to stop being true in a much bigger way.
The 18th-hole habit
The original Clubhouse was built around a single idea: put everything a member needs within walking distance of the 18th green. Ski-in, ski-out access to Big Sky Resort, the dining room and bar, the year-round heated pool and hot tubs, the fitness center, the golf and ski shop, the locker rooms. Even membership itself was structured around that hub. Social membership gets you the Clubhouse, the trails, tennis and pickleball, Fish Camp, and preferred access at Montage Big Sky. Signature Golf membership adds unlimited access to the golf courses on top of all of that. Either way, the building on the 18th hole has been the anchor.
The club's original championship course, the one Weiskopf famously walked on horseback before he ever drew a line, opened in 2007. For 17 years, one clubhouse was enough.
Here's a rough map of where a member's day has actually landed, and where it's about to land instead:
| Anchor point | Opened | What's there | Who it pulls |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Clubhouse (18th hole) | 2007 | Dining room, bar, pro shop, pool, fitness center | Golfers, longtime members |
| Tom's 10 | July 1, 2024 | 10-hole par-3 course, comfort station | Families, short-round golfers |
| Aspire | Scheduled 2026 | Two pools, climbing wall, gym, restaurant, pizza kitchen, yoga studio | Non-golfers, kids, fitness-first members |
Tom's 10 was the first crack
The pressure that eventually produced Tom's 10 started with membership itself. As the club grew and Montage Big Sky opened on its grounds, Spanish Peaks began looking in 2020 for a way to add golf capacity. There wasn't room for a full second 18. In an interview given around the time the course opened, the club's senior director of grounds and mountain operations described a membership base of 538, with 346 of those holding golf memberships against an eventual cap of 395. The math didn't leave room for a second championship-length layout, so Weiskopf pointed to a 35-acre stretch of timber and wetlands where he used to walk his dog and said that was the spot for something shorter.
Tom's 10 opened on July 1, 2024, a 10-hole par-3 course built from Weiskopf's favorite holes around the world, including nods to the seventh at Pebble Beach, the 18th at Loch Lomond, the eighth at Royal Troon, and the 16th at Augusta National. The club's senior director of golf described the appeal in practical terms: you can get a group around Tom's 10 in about 90 minutes, which matters as much for someone squeezing in a round before dinner as it does for a family that doesn't want to commit an entire afternoon. In its first summer of play, the course produced four hole-in-ones, and Roger Clemens threw the ceremonial first pitch from the first tee to open it.
What Tom's 10 actually proved had less to do with golf and more to do with behavior. Members were willing to leave the 18th-hole loop entirely for a separate, shorter experience elsewhere on the property. That was the first real crack in a single-building routine that had held for 17 years.
Phil Smith, who worked alongside Weiskopf for years and helped finish the course after his passing, put it this way when the project opened:
"Being at Spanish Peaks from the inception of the original course till he couldn't work anymore was such a gift. This final project is a direct reflection of his commitment to his craft."
That's not marketing language. It's the story of a course built by a member who lived nearby, walked the ground himself, and kept working on it through his final illness. It's also, quietly, the reason the club now has two distinct golf identities instead of one.
Aspire moves the center of gravity uphill
Tom's 10 split the golf routine. Aspire is set to split everything else.
The building itself is a 28,000-square-foot mass timber structure, built from Douglas Fir glulam and cross-laminated timber, designed by the architecture firm Lake Flato. It sits on a sloping brownfield site, positioned near the Lewis and Clark chair and just upslope from Montage Big Sky, which puts it closer to the ski lift than to any tee box. The program inside includes two pools, hot tubs, a climbing wall, a half-court gym for basketball, a fitness studio, a yoga studio, and a lodge restaurant with a pizza kitchen and a roof deck that looks straight at Lone Peak. Lake Flato has described the building as functioning as a literal trailhead and gateway into the surrounding mountain trail network, not an add-on to the golf experience.
The sustainability numbers are specific enough to be worth stating plainly: according to the WoodWorks Innovation Network case study on the project, Aspire is engineered to run roughly 70 percent more energy efficient than a comparable traditional building, with its orientation designed to capture passive solar gain and support on-site power generation. As of Lake Flato's own 2025 update on its active work, Aspire was one of three projects the firm listed as under construction and scheduled for completion in 2026.
The location matters as much as the program. The Clubhouse sits at the golf course. Aspire sits at a ski lift. That's not an incidental design choice. It means the building's natural foot traffic isn't golfers walking off the 18th green. It's families heading to the mountain, kids coming off a lesson, someone squeezing in a workout before or after a hike. For the first time since the club opened, that crowd gets a building built specifically for it, instead of sharing space with the golf routine at the original Clubhouse.
What actually changes for a member's week
For a Social member who never touches a golf club, this is the more consequential shift of the two. Before Aspire, the default gathering spot was still the Clubhouse, golf traffic and all. Once Aspire opens, that member has a building oriented entirely around fitness, family programming, and casual dining, sitting closer to the lift than to the fairway.
For a family with kids, the calculus changes too. Fort Peaks, the club's youth program, has always operated out of the existing infrastructure. A climbing wall and a half-court gym give that age group something the original Clubhouse pool never offered.
For dining, the map gets more interesting rather than more crowded. The original Clubhouse dining room stays where it's always been. Montage Big Sky, sitting between the two newer buildings, already offers member access to restaurants like Cortina, Alpenglow, and Backcast Bar & Grill. Aspire adds a fourth stop uphill, with its own restaurant and pizza kitchen. A member's dinner decision now runs through three distinct buildings spread across different elevations and different purposes, instead of one dining room at the bottom of the 18th fairway.
None of this is a criticism of the original setup. A single, well-run Clubhouse served the membership fine for 17 years. But a club built around one hub and a club built around three distinct destinations, each with its own reason to exist, are two different daily experiences. Tom's 10 opened the door on that shift. Aspire is walking through it.
If you're already living the Spanish Peaks routine and want a read on how these changes are likely to affect property values, rental demand, or timing around a future sale, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks this market daily. Life in Big Sky does exactly that. Live Big. Connect with our team.
