Most private clubs can tell you who designed their course. Spanish Peaks Mountain Club can tell you their designer lived here — walked the trails, knew the timber, and chose the site for his final project because it was where he liked to walk his dog.
That changes how you understand this neighborhood. Spanish Peaks didn't hire a world-famous architect and put his name on a sign. Tom Weiskopf was a member. He designed the original 18-hole championship course, then spent his final years drawing up a second one on the same property where he lived. When Tom's 10 opened on July 1, 2024, it became the only course he ever designed that he could see from his own community. Every round you play there carries that context.
How Tom's 10 Came to Be
As membership grew and Montage Big Sky opened on the property, the club began exploring a second course around 2020. Ryan Blechta, Spanish Peaks' senior director of grounds and mountain operations, brought the idea to Weiskopf. The response was immediate: Weiskopf said he already knew the perfect site. It was a 35-acre parcel of timber, streams, and wetlands he had been walking regularly for years.
The club broke ground in summer 2021. Weiskopf worked throughout design and construction with Phil Smith of Phil Smith Designs, his longtime collaborator. He was on-site a week before he passed away in August 2022 — inducted posthumously into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2024. Smith described the project as therapeutic: because Weiskopf lived nearby, he could give it his personal attention through his illness, returning again and again to a site he had already made his own long before anyone broke ground on it.
The result is a 10-hole par-3 layout that pays homage to Weiskopf's favorite holes from around the world. It is not a warm-up track or a family diversion bolted onto the main event. Each hole reflects a specific design conviction pulled from a career that spans some of the most respected courses in mountain golf. It is open to members and their guests.
What the Two Courses Actually Ask of You
The original 18-hole course sits at 7,000 feet across 300 acres, with no two fairways bordering each other — which means the sense of isolation on each hole is real, not manufactured. Golf Digest ranked it among the top six courses in Montana in its current 2023-26 ratings. From the tips it plays 7,200 yards, though the thin air adds considerable carry distance, which changes club selection on nearly every hole.
The signature 15th is a 210-yard par-3 playing sharply downhill from the course's highest point, with the Spanish Peaks mountain range filling the background and a pond guarding the left side of a green wrapped in bunkers. The 17th is Weiskopf's obligatory driveable par-4 — 322 to 349 yards downhill depending on the tees — with an undulated green that makes reaching it in one mean very little if you can't read the surface. Tom's 10 sits in a different register entirely: woodsier, more intimate, built from a site that was never cleared or shaped until Weiskopf decided it should be. Playing it after the 18-hole course is not repetition. It is a different conversation with the same designer, on terrain he chose for himself.
Fish Camp and Four Miles of Private Water
The golf courses share the property with an outpost most first-time visitors never encounter: Fish Camp, set beside a tributary of the South Fork of the West Fork of the Gallatin River. Two cabins, a dining tent, and a fire pit sit at the site. The club maintains over four miles of private access on Gallatin tributaries, and the Outfitters Cabin can arrange everything from a short wading session on the Gallatin to a full-day float on the Madison — running to the west and consistently regarded as one of the finest trout fisheries in the country — or the Yellowstone.
Fish Camp is accessible by trail or mountain bike and functions as its own destination on the property: quiet, separate in feel from the Clubhouse, and open for hiking when the fishing rods stay put. When a day on the water ends at the fire pit with the sky going dark over the timber, you are still on Spanish Peaks property. That is the part that doesn't show up in the membership overview.
Spa Montage and What Member Access Actually Means
Spa Montage spans 11,000 square feet at the center of the resort, with 12 treatment rooms including two couples' suites, nearly 3,000 square feet of pool space, heated plunge pools, steam rooms, and separate his-and-hers relaxation lounges. The practical question for members: Spanish Peaks Mountain Club members can purchase day passes to the spa facilities, subject to availability — a detail confirmed in the spa's current FAQ. Any guest who books a service of 60 minutes or longer receives full facility access for the day.
The treatment menu runs from the signature Big Sky Facial and hot-stone massage to Ayurvedic body-balancing work and sound healing sessions. For the current winter season, stylist Christian Zamora is running a salon residency at the spa, offering bespoke beauty services. Spa doors open at 8 a.m.; treatment hours run 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. That window overlaps cleanly with the back half of a ski day, which is precisely the intention.
How a Day Strings Together
On ski days, the Sacajawea Yurt handles mid-mountain lunch and warming stops — hot cocoa, wine, beer, a place to sit above the treeline before heading back out. The yurt also runs snowcat dinners, which occupy a different category than anything available at the Clubhouse. When the lifts close, Cortina at Montage covers Italian; Beartooth Pub runs casual the rest of the way with bowling, pool, and local craft beers; the Clubhouse dining room closes out whatever kind of day you had.
The geometry of the property makes this possible. Spanish Peaks covers 5,700 acres. Tom's 10 sits minutes from the Clubhouse. Fish Camp is reachable by trail. Spa Montage is inside the resort at the community's center. A winter day here has a natural arc — first tracks, mid-mountain lunch, late-afternoon spa, dinner at Cortina — that doesn't require a car after you arrive. Summer runs the same pattern with different pieces: Tom's 10 in the morning, Fish Camp in the afternoon, the Clubhouse pool before dinner. What Weiskopf understood about this land, having walked it for years before he ever picked up a design pencil again, was that it was already complete. He just added two more reasons to stay.
Life in Big Sky Real Estate has worked in this community through every phase of its development. If you want to understand which parcels sit closest to Tom's 10, what membership categories convey with different property types at Spanish Peaks, or what daily life here genuinely looks and feels like across seasons, our team knows this ground. Live Big. Connect with us.
