Beartooth Highway

Beartooth Highway

68 mile byway in Wyoming/Montanta

September 4, 2014

Every local my boyfriend and I ran into recommended the Beartooth Highway as a means North from Yellowstone. I overheard a tourist calling it “more spectacular than Glacier [National Park].” I’ve been impatient to explore Glacier since we started planning our road trip, so this clinched my excitement.

For us, this was the most drastic road since Rt 40 through the Rocky Mountains.  In 68 miles, we passed through three National Forests and gained and lost 5,000 feet of elevation – topping out at 10,947 feet at Beartooth Pass. Rising up that high, we saw three ecotypes as well – Alpine tundra (>9500 feet), Mountain Meadows (<9500 feet) and Shrub Grassland Meadows (<8000 feet). All this change left us dizzy with altitude and a touch of vertigo – but the views were worth it.

Scroll through for ever-changing landscape:

All photos and text by Gale Straub © 2014