BIG SKY, Mont. — In the weeks before the holiday season, snowfall at the Yellowstone Club is both a blessing and a curse. It is an essential ingredient for this 13,600-acre private ski club just north of Yellowstone National Park. Yet it is also an unwelcome wrinkle for the 2,000 to 3,000 contractors who come and go each day, racing to build homes, renovate lodges and break ground on new projects.

Just a few years ago, such activity would have been hard to fathom. This alpine resort defaulted on a $375 million loan in November 2008, epitomizing the risky loans and real estate speculation that precipitated the financial crisis, and it became mired in bankruptcy and a messy divorce case.

Today, six years after its bankruptcy, the Yellowstone Club is thriving. In the last two years alone, the club has sold nearly $1 billion in real estate. It has doubled its membership, which includes the likes of Bill Gates and the investor and Hollywood producer Peter Chernin, to more than 500 households from 260 in 2009, and it is gearing up for what is likely to be its busiest winter since the club broke ground more than 15 years ago.

Of course, busy here is relative, and that is one of the biggest selling points.

“Look at the crowds at Breckenridge on opening day,” said Sam Byrne, the financier who bought the Yellowstone Club out of bankruptcy in 2009. He pointed to a Web camera showing what looked like ants dotting a ski run at the Breckenridge resort in Colorado, then called up satellite images of lift lines at Vail Ski Resort.

Like many members, Byrne first visited the Yellowstone Club as a guest and, after seeing its 2,200 skiable acres, became a member in 2005.

“The first time I skied here, I didn’t even make it into the lodge because I was so enamored,” said Byrne, a founder of CrossHarbor Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in Boston.

That is a common initial impression of the club. Its currency is not its night life or shopping, but the promise of privacy, security, no lift lines and pristine fields of snow.

Untrammeled trails do come with a price. Patrons must own property. The smallest condominiums cost about $4 million, and single-family homes start at $5 million, with annual assessments in the thousands of dollars. There is also an initial fee of $300,000, in addition to $36,000 a year for dues. Only members, their families and guests have access to the club, with its ski-in, ski-out homes that typically include ski rooms with individual lockers, heated driveways, bunk rooms and $5,000 boot dryers. They have access to 15 chairlifts, an 18-hole golf course designed by Tom Weiskopf, and three ski lodges. There are no fences, but the surrounding 250,000 acres of Gallatin National Forest and a security team run by a former Secret Service officer are reassurance enough; many guests do not even lock their doors.

Although Byrne has made a career buying and financing distressed real estate, his interest in buying the Yellowstone Club was as much about seeing the club succeed, he said, as it was about turning a profit —though the deal is shaping up to be incredibly profitable.

“He turned a Wild West project into something with institutional diligence,” said Mike Meldman, a member of Yellowstone Club and the chief executive of Discovery Land Co., which took over the club’s operations and development in 2009.

The club was originally the brainchild of Tim Blixseth, who pieced together more than 100,000 acres of undevelopable timberland and swapped it for land on the back side of Big Sky Resort. By the mid-2000s, lots at Yellowstone Club were selling for seven figures and membership had grown to include hedge fund managers, professional athletes and captains of industry.

The club’s financial woes stemmed from a loan to Blixseth and his wife at the time, Edra, that “they never should have gotten,” Byrne said, referring to a $375 million loan that Credit Suisse syndicated in 2005.

In October 2008, the Blixseths divorced, with Edra Blixseth assuming ownership of the club and its debt. When the club filed for bankruptcy a month later, it was losing $20 million a year between operating expenses and debt servicing.

Homeowners weren’t caught unaware. In spring 2008, a group of 14 members formed an ad hoc board to represent all owners, who collectively owned more than $3 billion in real estate at the club. “Nobody wanted to see a bankruptcy,” Byrne said.

When that did happen, Credit Suisse and CrossHarbor were the only two bidders.

In June 2009, CrossHarbor paid $115 million for the club and pledged an additional $100 million for capital improvements and payments to unsecured creditors. CrossHarbor in turn invited members and other investors, including Discovery Land Co., to buy into the deal under the same terms.

“Sam was uniquely positioned to pull this off,” said Scott Prince, a former Goldman Sachs partner who joined the club in 2004 and was among the 78 members who invested. “Had it been an opportunistic investor, I don’t think you would have seen the same balance of doing what’s right for the members and the investors.”

One of Byrne’s first tasks after the purchase was to repair the club’s reputation. The former owners owed $10 million to local contractors, vendors and employees.

Another priority for Byrne was to make the operations transparent and work with members to outline a strategy for eventually turning over ownership to the club. When the club reaches 700 to 750 households, Byrne will start the handover process. In the meantime, he said, the club has no remaining debt from the bankruptcy and has positive cash flow.

There is a laundry list of new projects in the works, including more restaurants, a golf clubhouse, below-ground parking and new spa and fitness facilities. Nevertheless, Vail or Breckenridge it will never be. Membership is capped at 864 households.