Beartooth Highway

The air thins as your engine labors past the 10,000-foot mark on US Highway 212, where Montana’s Red Lodge fades into memory and Wyoming’s alpine tundra stretches endlessly ahead. The Beartooth Highway climbs 5,500 vertical feet over 68 miles of pristine pavement, topping out at 10,947 feet—making it America’s highest paved road and the closest thing to driving on the moon without leaving the planet. Charles Kuralt called it the most beautiful road in America, and after threading the needle between jagged peaks and glacial lakes, you’ll understand why he wasn’t being dramatic.

Any vehicle can handle this route—the pavement stays smooth from Red Lodge, Montana to the northeast entrance of Yellowstone—but your radiator and lungs will work harder than usual. The road snakes through the Beartooth Pass with switchbacks that reveal new panoramas at every turn, crossing the Montana-Wyoming border multiple times as it follows ancient glacial valleys. Beartooth Lake sits at mile 46, a perfect alpine mirror reflecting the surrounding peaks, while Rock Creek Vista Point offers the classic postcard shot that graces every Wyoming tourism brochure. The U.S. Forest Service keeps the road open June through September, weather permitting, though snow can close the pass without warning even in summer.

Cell service disappears once you climb past the tree line, so download your maps beforehand and fuel up in Red Lodge—there’s nothing but wilderness for the next 68 miles until you hit Cooke City. Dispersed camping is allowed in designated areas, and the high-altitude lakes offer some of the best brook trout fishing in the Rockies if you pack a rod. The thin air at elevation will leave flatlanders gasping during even short hikes, but the payoff is worth the oxygen debt.

This isn’t a trail that tests your 4×4 skills or breaks your suspension—it’s a journey that breaks your assumptions about what American roads can show you. You’ll spend the day climbing through ecosystems that change every thousand feet, from Montana ranch country to arctic tundra that exists nowhere else in the lower 48. The Beartooth Highway delivers the kind of scenery that makes you pull over every few miles just to prove to yourself it’s real, not a desktop wallpaper.