Spring Comes to the Beartooth Highway

The top of the world as seen from the Beartooth Highway (left side of panorama)

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

The top of the world as seen from the Beartooth Highway (right side of panorama)

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

Minimalist landscapes of pure form and abiding quiet.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

Spring comes late to this high country. If it’s early June, bring your long underwear. Likely the snow has just been plowed from the Beartooth Highway, the road newly opened from Cooke City, Wyoming, at the Northeast Gate of Yellowstone National Park, to Red Lodge, a small town in southern Montana, a bit west of the Custer National Forest and the Little Big Horn Battlefield memorial.

By the time we reach Vista Point, we have left the streams and wildflowers behind, from here to the Beartooth Pass, it is rocks against the wind and time is measured in millennia.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

The Beartooth Highway twists and turns some sixty-eight miles through the Absaroka and Beartooth Mountains, a mile or two above sea level and a billion miles from hustle of city traffic and job deliverables. Thirty-plus years ago, CBS newsman Charles Kuralt, one of America’s most beloved travel journalists, dubbed the Beartooth Highway, “the most beautiful drive in America.” His accolade has been reaffirmed by Beartooth travelers ever since.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

We came to Red Lodge for the wedding of craft brewmaster Sam Hoffmann, the son of one of my lifelong best friends. After the celebration, and a couple of tasty Red Lodge Ales at Sam’s Taproom, we packed it in for the night. The next day, we were off at dawn, and we were awed at what we found: Rushing mountain streams and early wildflowers just peeking out, snowcapped peaks above the tree line as we breasted the pass, and finally mirror lakes, the pilot peak and an alpine meadow with a massive buffalo, looking irritated that we were invading his space.

Looking upstream, a billion drops of liquid snow rush down a thousand tiny steps in a forever dance.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

The movement of the water is mesmerizing, each moment distinct unto itself as the water slides away down rocks anchored in the streambed.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

It is still early for resplendent alpine meadows but a few brave flowers are breaking through.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

A buffalo greets us (NO!) at Yellowstone's Northeast Gate. I am happy to have a long lens.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

The Beartooth is home to at least 20 peaks towering over 12,000 feet, sparkling, primeval alpine lakes reflecting cumulus cloudscapes that stretch towards the heavens, countless alpine wildflowers, chilly streams and waterfalls swollen with runoff from the first snowmelt. Not surprisingly, there were also a few dozen hearty souls braving early spring conditions to ski, to bike, or just to venture out and be awed by, and one of a half-dozen vistas along one of the most stunningly beautiful four-hour road-trips in North America.

Here the top of the world meets the skirt of the sky.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

We can hear the falls before we locate the pathway carved into a peak on the south horizon.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

Pilot Peak, enveloped in swirling winter storm clouds, stands tall at the western end of the Beartooth trail.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

We stopped to talk with bicyclists clunking around the rest area in their studded shoes. The bikers climbed up the slopes in knots of five or eight, stopping at turnouts, partly for a bite or drink of water, but like us, to marvel at the sweep of majesty looking into the Beartooth mountain range stretching out north into the Gallatin national forest. Nice people. With time to talk. Locals mostly, but people still drawing succor from a raw beauty where mankind’s heavy hand has not marked the land.

A pause in the morning's ascent offers this cyclist a tapestry of greens and blues, whites and blacks, and occasional sparkles of reflected sunlight.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

Caleb and Jonathan exude excitement of downhill skiing in Spring conditions.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

Later, we stopped to chat with a couple of guys who were loving Beartooth skiing. They said conditions were ‘’perfect,” and the “rockin” downhill was worth the rigorous climb up. There was no lodge, no parking lot, no lift. Just the waking mountains, and the exhilarating free descent in an envelope of white light. Here, where the Great Spirit inspired Shoshone, Crow and Blackfeet for hundreds of years, it is impossible not to feel the Grace of the Creator as your feet hit the ground, a cool breath of air nips your ears, and your eyes feast looking out across the top of the world.

Alpine lake still locked in winter's grip.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

This fine Spring day, Beartooth Lake is molting its icy skin.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

By the end of day, we had traveled about forty miles as the crow files (crows were not flying at this altitude), almost seventy miles with the switchbacks, and nearly a mile vertically, though multiple climate zones. Each turn seemed to present different views, many breathtaking, each a treat for the senses. I wasn’t driving, so I had the best of the trip. It was a high-country meditation—at once relaxing and deeply satisfying, and at the same time, an energizing experience in the present tense. At the end, there was Yellowstone, but that is a different story. What we learned on this day was that the Beartooth Highway is a joy unto itself, in its beauty, its intensity and its serenity.

A handful of campers start the day as sun floods over the peaks into this Beartooth valley.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

The earth pushes up an array of crystal plates strong against those there before, which have crumbles down the face fo the expanse.

Photo by Bennett W. Root, Jr.

Story and Photos by Bennett W. Root, Jr.