Mirror Pond Lodge

Wright and his wife, Liz, grew up in Colorado, climbing and skiing. It was on a trip to Glacier National Park that they both decided Montana was a place they wanted to build a home.

“But at that point we decided that a cabin you have to ski into wasn’t practical with two kids,” Wright says. “When I came up to look at property at the Yellowstone Club, I knew it was what we were looking for — I call it wilderness with infrastructure.”

His two sons, nine and 11, often leave after breakfast to ski for the morning, meeting up with their parents for lunch later on.

“There are not many places where you can do that and know your kids are going to be okay,” Wright says. “It’s that kind of atmosphere — where they know everyone and everyone knows them — that keeps us here.”

Because the Wrights love the outdoors and because the Yellowstone Club embodies that feeling, the unfettered design of the bedrooms encourages people to get outside and enjoy all that Big Sky proffers.

“The bedrooms are for sleeping,” Wright says. “But the house is for spending time with the people we love in a gorgeous setting.”

Out back, a pond — which can be used for reflection or for jumping into — creates the ideal spot for a late evening summer barbeque.

Architect Larry Pearson, of Pearson Design Group in Bozeman, agrees that the Mirror Pond Lodge is really a family home.

“To me it’s a home that allows you take in the best of Montana, swimming and water for the summer and skiing and amazing winter experiences,” he says. “I imagined entertaining friends and family very well in this house because it allows you to move between spaces, between social gathering points. The kitchen is integral to the living
room. Cooking pancakes or grilling fish, it’s all part of the living area and all the rooms become one larger experience. A recreational ski home is about extended social adventures.”

Over the generous three-car garage with plenty of room for ski gear, and above the efficiently laid out guesthouse, is a tower with a 360-degree view. Designed to suggest a forest service fire tower, this extraordinary space opens itself up to become a meditative room for yoga or just a place to listen to the waterfall feeding the pond below. Expansive vistas allow a very private place to watch the sharp edges of the first frost, the settled crispness of winter, or a starlit dark sky unzip into a summer velveteen morning.

“Our office is known for a few different things one of them is to build into the landscape, using natural topography so the house is integrated into the land,” Pearson says. “In doing that it’s the reverse of cutting a pad and building a house. This lays into the landscape. We also have some amazing features. As you come up into the house you look through the breezeway and take in your own pond — one way we try to use the landscape.”