Beartooth Pass reaches 10,947 feet, making it one of the highest paved roads in the United States, and it earns that reputation honestly. US 212 climbs out of Red Lodge, Montana, through a series of switchbacks and long sweeps of road cut into the face of the Beartooth Mountains, finally crossing a tundra plateau that looks more like Greenland than the American West. The broad top is treeless, dotted with small lakes and snow patches that last well into summer, and rock and sky meet in wide views. The journalist Charles Kuralt called it the most beautiful drive in America, and generations of riders have taken his word for it.
The road was finished in the mid-1930s and still feels like a feat of engineering. On the Montana side, it rises from the town in a famous set of hairpins, with big drops on the open side and few guard rails to calm the nerves. At the top, you are in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness country, near Montana's highest peaks, including Granite Peak, which stands at just over 12,800 feet. In the alpine zone, you may spot marmots and pikas, mountain goats on the slopes and sometimes a bighorn sheep, and the flowers in July are unexpectedly bright against the grey stone.
The pass is only open when the snow allows, usually from late May until mid-October, and crews fight for every mile each spring. It can close at any time if a storm comes in, and snow has fallen on the summit in every month of the year. Dress for it: at the top, it can be thirty degrees colder than in town, and weather can swing from sun to sleet in an hour. Start early, because afternoon thunderstorms build over the high ground in summer, and lightning on an exposed plateau is not a risk anyone should take.
Services are thin. Fuel and food are in Red Lodge, a town of a couple of thousand, at the bottom of the east side, and in Cooke City on the far side, which keeps its own small supply. Do not count on anything at the top. Altitude can make you light-headed, so stop and breathe if you need to.
Many riders turn here and come back down the way they came, and the descent offers a second look at a view you had your back to on the way up.