A folded membership inquiry for the Yellowstone Club was discovered Tuesday morning pinned beside a lost cat notice and a flyer for beginner pickleball at the Big Sky post office. The application appeared to have been printed from the club’s website, with the income verification section highlighted in yellow marker.
Postmaster Delores Haskin said she found it while restamping the community board at 7:15 a.m. The document bore no name, only a phone number with a 406 area code and a handwritten note in the margin reading “just curious what it takes.”
“Someone printed it double-sided to save paper,” Haskin said. “That’s either a local or someone who wishes they were.”
The Yellowstone Club remains the valley’s most persistent open secret. The working crews who build the homes there talk about it at the Buck’s T-4 breakfast counter like it’s a foreign country. The second-home owners who have been coming since the nineties speak of it the way people speak about a party they weren’t invited to but still check the photos for.
Lift operator Mike Torrence, who has worked at Big Sky Resort since the Swift Current chair was new, said he sees the applications most seasons. “Usually they show up in March, right after bonus season,” he said. “This one’s early. Must be a good snow year coming.”
The post office bulletin board remains the only place in Big Sky where the two populations reliably occupy the same square footage. The line for PO boxes moves at the same speed for everyone. The community board does not discriminate.
By afternoon the application had been removed. Haskin did not see who took it. The lost cat notice remains. The pickleball flyer has acquired three phone numbers written in different ink colors.
Torrence shrugged when asked if he would apply himself. “I’ve got a season pass and a parking spot at the meadow lot,” he said. “What more does a person need.”
The phone number on the application goes to voicemail. The greeting is a man’s voice saying he is on the mountain and will return calls after first chair.