By Sam Seddon

The Yellowstone Club is an exclusive member-only club, tucked away in the bottom corner of Montana. But, besides this, what is so special about the Yellowstone Club?

Firstly, the entrance to this club is highly exclusive. The high barriers to entry include purchasing or building a home on the property of the club. This has a starting price of around $20 million, adding to the exclusivity of the club and ensuring only the very richest have access. You’re probably thinking, is that all? For the mere price of $20 million, I could be a member of the Yellowstone Club? Well, no, despite this being an already ludicrous fee, there are further payments any applicant will have to pay. This starts with the entry fee of around $300,000-$400,000. Admittedly, this is just a fraction of the house price, but nonetheless, another massive financial barrier. Finally, the yearly instalments start around $40,000 but can increase to over $78,000, which is the highest annual fee reported.

Before you even consider attempting to overcome this enormous financial barrier, you may want to think, what is in this club? What is so special about this club is that 900 member families are ready to pay the hefty sum to join such an illustrious club. Well, let’s consider what comes with the membership of this club. The club includes approximately 3,000 acres of skiable terrain in the winter, as well as 3,700 vertical feet. This provides luxury and uninterrupted skiing for the families wealthy enough to join the club. Furthermore, the benefit of ‘sweet shacks’ containing free snacks and hot drinks for those venturing around the resort. Providing a unique and luxurious experience for resort goers to enjoy. As well as this, incredibly fast lift queues have been reported, with some claims that just 90 seconds is too long to wait, and this is being addressed through an increase in members’ fees from $40,000 to $50,000 to install a new 6-man chairlift, hopefully addressing these mammoth wait times. The service seems wonderful, but what about the actual skiing? This is also more than satisfactory. Not only is the resort incredibly big for such a small number of people, but the runs available are also high quality. The Pioneer Bowl provides a great example of a series of groomed and ungroomed terrain for the more developed skiers to take on. Like any resort, the Yellowstone Club resort offers an easy access section for beginners, the offspring of the uber rich, to enjoy their first days on the slopes, but this is contrasted by the advanced section on the backside of Pioneer Mountain, filled with single and double black diamonds for the more advanced skiers in the resort to take on. The Big Sky resort can also be accessed by the Yellowstone Club members, with no additional fee, and is carefully guarded to make sure no ordinary resort goers can access the Yellowstone Club. This provides an even larger skiing area for the Yellowstone families to roam around, although the exposure to the public is probably not as attractive as the thousands of acres of private land. Whilst I’m sure there is much more to this secretive resort I hope this peeks your interest to delve deeper into the institutions that provide privacy and luxury to some of your favourite celebrities.