COOKE CITY, Mont. -- To drive on the Beartooth Highway is to
dance on top of the world. The mountainous landscape possesses
thrilling, take-your-breath-away beauty.
We expect our time on the Beartooth Highway to be
spectacular. It is a high performer on those exclamation-point
lists of greatest roads in America. The serpentine roadway is
lauded as "The Highway to the Sky" and "A Drive Along the Roof
of the Rockies."
The Beartooth Highway begins and ends in Montana but makes
a generous dip into Wyoming. It winds through Custer, Gallatin
and Shoshone national forests, one of the most rugged and
largest wilderness areas in the United States.
By tradition, the Beartooth Highway opens the Saturday of
Memorial Day weekend. The driving season lasts until Oct. 15.
About 1,250 cars per day use the high-elevation route,
according to the Montana Department of Transportation. The
famed scenic drive is a 69-mile section of U.S. Highway 212.
Snowplows remain on standby when we drive the switchbacks
over Montana's tallest mountains on May 27. We begin in Cooke
City, situated at Yellowstone National Park's northeastern
entrance. This old gold-mining town awakens as soon as the
highway opens because townspeople depend on tourists almost
exclusively.
From the beginning, it is clear that this is no ordinary
drive through the mountains. A sign begs for caution: "Open
Range. Expect cows on road." We glimpse a herd of elk and stop
for picture-taking at a sparkling stream fringed with
delicate, colorful wildflowers. We enter a forest of spruce,
fir and lodge-pole pine mixed with stands of aspen, and almost
immediately feel a change in elevation. Long-range views of
snow-mottled mountains, wide valleys and lapis-blue alpine
lakes span the windshield.
Once the two-lane starts twisting into hairpin curves, we
marveled at more than just the scenery. The road is an
engineering triumph. Construction began in 1932 and required
five years to complete. The highway traverses the meeting
point of several of North America's major geologic and
tectonic features. Granite peaks scratch the sky.
Glacier-carved cirques empty into U-shaped valleys.
Our car climbs higher and higher to 10,947 feet above sea
level. Isolated and surreal, the Beartooth Plateau hides under
a light blanket of snow. Small ice-crusted lakes and rounded
boulders punctuate the tundra. Animal tracks cross wide-open
spaces. A young man catches the wind with his snow kite and it
pulls him across a field near Little Bear Lake.
We reach Top of the World, a stopping point for food, fuel
and lodging. Snow flurries sprinkle three cars in the parking
lot. Within a few miles, the uber-scenic highway turns into a
playground. Downhill skiers pepper the white landscape. They
plunge down ungroomed slopes in frenzied disarray. Once at the
bottom, they hitchhike back to the top -- a half-dozen at a
time piled in the beds of pickup trucks -- for another run.
People with binoculars and scopes watch their friends tear
down mountainsides. This weekend presents the season's first
access, hence a festival atmosphere spills into parking areas.
The formidable Beartooth Mountains deliver a powerful
heart-in-the-throat view -- a sight not soon forgotten. We
zero in on the Bear's Tooth. The Crow Indians named the narrow
pyramidal spire. The jagged granite peaks are thought to be
2.7 billion years old.
A sign marking the 45th parallel includes a notation that
we are halfway between the North Pole and the equator.
The 5,555-foot descent to Red Lodge is a string of
superlatives. From Vista Point, we have expansive views of
Rock Creek Canyon. A seven-mile stretch of switchbacks
displays the peaks and glaciers of the Beartooth Mountains,
the windswept tundra of Hellroaring and Silver Run plateaus
and the cascading waters of Rock Creek. At the base of the
Beartooth Mountains, we enter the historic mining town.
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Beartooth Highway
The Beartooth Highway is one of 27 All-American Roads, a
special designation of the National Scenic Byways Program. CBS
"On the Road" correspondent Charles Kuralt called it
"America's most beautiful road."
Driving time: Plan on at least three hours of driving time
between Cooke City and Red Lodge, Mont.
For the camera-crazed: Reach the Clay Butte Lookout via a
three-mile spur road. You will see Granite Peak to the
northwest, the North Absaroka Wilderness and Yellowstone
National Park to the west, Clarks Fork Valley to the southwest
and the Bighorn Mountains to the east.
Camping: Beartooth Lake Campground at the base of Beartooth
Butte and Island Lake Campground offer excellent fishing,
boating and hiking.
Information: U.S. Forest Service, Beartooth Ranger
District, 406-446-2103. For road closings due to snowfall or
mudslides, www.mdt.mt.gov/travinfo/beartooth. National Scenic
Byways Program, www. byways.org.
Side trip: Chief Joseph Scenic Highway intersects with the
Beartooth Highway near Lake Creek Falls (47 miles).
(Contact travel editor Linda Lange of The Knoxville News
Sentinel in Tennessee at www.knoxnews.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com)
