Wyoming’s highest paved road climbs to 10,947 feet, and that’s where it gets interesting

What’s waiting above the treeline in Wyoming

The Beartooth Highway doesn’t ease you in. One minute you’re in a pine valley in Montana, and the next, the road starts climbing and doesn’t stop.

By the time it levels out, you’re above 10,000 feet, the trees are gone, and the world looks nothing like it did 30 minutes ago.

This 68-mile All-American Road crosses into Wyoming and keeps going up, through some of the oldest rock on Earth, past glacial lakes, alpine wildflowers, and a ski area that runs in June. The summit isn’t the destination.

It’s where the drive really starts.

Standing at 10,947 feet with nowhere higher to go

Beartooth Pass sits at 10,947 feet in Park County, Wyoming, and that makes it the highest point on the highway and the highest-elevation paved road in the entire Northern Rockies.

From the summit overlook, you can see in every direction: glacial lakes below, snowfields above, granite peaks pushing into the sky.

Even in July, snow patches cling to the slopes around you, and the air is cold enough that a jacket isn’t optional.

The jagged pyramid of rock called the Bear’s Tooth rises in the distance, the spire that gave this whole range its name.

The Depression-era crews who blasted this road into existence

Workers started carving the Beartooth Highway out of solid rock in 1932, using dynamite, hand tools, and early heavy machinery. They could only work a few months each year before the alpine weather shut everything down.

The project ran four years, and when it finally opened on June 14, 1936, it connected Red Lodge, Montana, to Yellowstone National Park at elevations approaching 11,000 feet.

In 2002, the highway earned designation as a National Scenic Byways All-American Road.

CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt once called it the most beautiful drive in America, and that line has followed the road ever since.

Four billion years of rock passing outside your window

The Beartooth Mountains hold some of the oldest exposed rock on Earth.

The U.S. Forest Service confirms that igneous rocks here crystallized somewhere between 3.4 and 4 billion years ago, and as you drive, those ancient granite and metamorphic formations rise on both sides of the road.

Watch for Beartooth Butte near Beartooth Lake, a formation roughly 410 million years old that cuts a different profile from everything around it.

To the west, the Absaroka Range looks completely different because it is: volcanic in origin, a sharp contrast to the Beartooth’s ancient granite backbone.

Thirteen miles of open tundra above the last trees

The highway spends roughly 13 miles entirely above the treeline, crossing open alpine tundra where no trees can survive. You can actually watch the forest disappear as the road climbs.

The pines thin out, get shorter, and then stop altogether, and suddenly you’re driving across a wide, wind-scoured plateau dotted with small lakes and wildflowers.

Indian paintbrush, columbine, and shooting stars bloom across the tundra in June and July.

The landscape up here resembles the Arctic far more than anything you’d expect in the Rocky Mountains, and hundreds of plant species grow in the shallow soils.

Your first big view: Rock Creek Canyon at 9,190 feet

Rock Creek Vista Point comes up early if you’re driving from the Red Lodge side, and it sets the tone for everything ahead.

At 9,190 feet, the overlook gives you a sweeping view of Rock Creek Canyon and the Hellroaring Plateau.

A short paved interpretive trail leads to the viewing platform, and the U.S. Forest Service maintains the site as a day-use area within the Custer Gallatin National Forest.

From the railing, you can look back down the switchbacks you just climbed and see the alpine plateau rising above you. Most people stop twice: once to look, once to take it in.

The halfway point between the equator and the North Pole

About 30 miles from Red Lodge, a roadside sign marks the 45th parallel, the latitude that splits the distance between the equator and the North Pole.

Just past that marker, Twin Lakes appear below the road, two blue-green alpine lakes tucked into a rocky valley on the Beartooth Plateau.

The surrounding 944,000-acre Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness holds hundreds of glacial lakes just like them.

Twenty peaks over 12,000 feet rise in the surrounding mountains, including Granite Peak at 12,799 feet, the highest point in Montana.

Ski runs in June, no lodge, no cell service

Near the summit, Beartooth Basin operates as the only summer-only ski area in North America. It opened in 1962 on north-facing slopes above 10,000 feet, where snow holds on well into summer.

Two surface lifts run the terrain, and that’s about it. No lodge.

No cell service. No resort infrastructure of any kind.

The area typically opens in late May and runs through late June or early July, depending on snow conditions and whether the highway is even open yet.

Skier capacity is limited, and the weather at this elevation can shift fast.

Beartooth Lake and four kinds of trout below the butte

Beartooth Lake sits at roughly 8,900 feet along the Wyoming stretch of the highway, with Beartooth Butte rising above the shoreline on one side and wilderness on the other.

The lake holds rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, lake trout, and brook trout, and both motorized and non-motorized boats can use the ramp for access.

A Forest Service campground at the lake connects to trails leading into the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

The butte looming over the water is that same 410-million-year-old formation you saw from the road, and it looks even bigger from down here.

Island Lake: 146 acres, trail access and brook trout

Island Lake sits at 9,518 feet and covers 146 acres, making it one of the most popular stops on the entire highway.

Brook trout are plentiful, and the lake serves as the starting point for the Beartooth High Lakes Trail, which pushes deeper into the backcountry toward Night Lake and beyond.

A short paved spur road off the highway leads to a Forest Service campground, boat ramp, and beach area.

Open alpine meadows surround the lake on most sides, and wildlife sightings here are common enough that you should have your camera ready when you pull in.

A 1942 fire lookout with views of a 1988 wildfire’s reach

A few miles off the main highway on a gravel road, the Clay Butte Fire Lookout has been watching over the Shoshone National Forest since 1942, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

It served as an active fire lookout until the 1960s and landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. Today, volunteers staff it as a visitor information site.

From up top, you can see the Absaroka Range laid out across the horizon, the jagged scar left by the 1988 Clover-Mist wildfire, and the layered geology of the plateau stretching in every direction.

Grizzlies, goats and moose along the highway corridor

The Beartooth Highway runs through one of the most wildlife-rich corridors in the lower 48 states. Grizzly bears and black bears both move through the surrounding forests and meadows.

Mountain goats, bighorn sheep, elk, moose, and mule deer show up regularly near or from the road.

At the higher elevations, marmots are practically guaranteed: you’ll spot them sunning themselves on boulders near pullouts.

The western end of the highway drops into forested valleys where Pilot Peak and Index Peak dominate the skyline, and wildlife sightings pick up again near the treeline.

The road ends at Yellowstone’s northeast entrance, where the Lamar Valley starts just inside the park.

Drive Beartooth Pass in Wyoming

To reach Beartooth Pass, take U.S. Highway 212 between Red Lodge, Montana, and Cooke City, Montana. The pass summit sits roughly in the middle of the 68-mile route.

The road typically opens in late May and closes by mid-October, depending on weather.

Services along the highway are almost nonexistent: the Top of the World Store, operating since the 1930s, is the only commercial stop on the entire route.

Before you go, check the Montana and Wyoming DOT websites for current road conditions, especially early and late in the season.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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