Charles Kuralt called the Beartooth Highway the most beautiful drive in America. I haven’t traveled as much as Charles did, but I’ll take his word for it…
The highway is spectacular even though it is less than 70 miles long.
Construction was completed in 1936, and it’s hard to imagine building the road without modern equipment.
From Wikipedia: “In August 1872, the pass was crossed by Civil War General Philip Sheridan and 120 men returning from an inspection tour of Yellowstone National Park. Rather than take the long detour down the Clarks Fork Yellowstone River to return to Billings, Sheridan took the advice of an old hunter named Shuki Greer, who claimed intimate knowledge of the Beartooth Mountains.”
The summit sits at almost 11,000 feet. The road is closed from mid-October to mid-May depending on snow conditions.
The pictures I took today just don’t do it justice. It’s awe inspiring!
We hiked to a pile of rocks at the summit. All that grows there is alpine vegetation less than 4″ tall.
The growing season is so late that all the wildflowers were just in bloom even though it’s late August.
You might have to gaze at this picture a bit to see it, but in the dirt 2000′ below where I took this picture, people made a stick figure out of rocks that is smiling. My guess is that the stick figure is at least 100′ tall.
I was shocked at the number of bicyclists that traverse the road. The road rises almost 3000′ in 12 miles.
The snow must be tough on the snow markers because they finally started using willow tree stalks instead of actual markers.
We will definitely go back to explore the area sometime in the future. It’s just amazing…
