If You're Ever In Yellowstone Park...

[Al Agnew]

I've been coming to Montana, Wyoming, Yellowstone Park, and Grand Teton Park for many years. As a wildlife artist, the parks have always been some of the best places in North America to get wildlife reference; I've taken literally tens of thousands of photos of animals in those parks. Grand Teton has terrific opportunities to see moose. Yellowstone has everything, and I've gotten good photos of wolves, bison, elk, mule deer, pronghorns, black bears, and grizzlies, along with a lot of photos of more seldom seen wildlife like weasels. And Montana is a fly fishing destination of world renown, with some of the most beautiful and spectacular rivers anywhere. Yes, it can be crowded, but certainly no more crowded than a Missouri trout park or even the blue ribbon trout streams, and the trout are wild, beautiful, and plentiful.

But with all the times I've been in the area in and around Yellowstone, there are still a lot of places I have yet to see, and yesterday I discovered a new one. It is one of the most spectacular drives I've ever taken.

We had two friends visiting; Becky Johnson, an artist friend, and Nancy Spencer, a former art collector who still owns a bunch of my paintings. Mary had taken them into the park the day before, and we were trying to figure out a place to take them other than the usual park roads. I was looking on the maps and saw the Beartooth Highway...and realized that we'd never taken that drive, at least not all of it.

The Beartooth Highway, U.S. 212, runs from the lesser traveled northeast entrance to Yellowstone, across the Beartooth and Absaroka Mountains to Red Lodge, MT, and on to I-90 just west of Billings. We'd taken it once out of the park, but turned off onto the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway which goes to Cody, WY. Now...the Chief Joseph Highway is gorgeous, and we'd always thought it one of the most spectacular drives in the West. But we'd never taken the highway to Red Lodge.

We left Livingston, driving up Hwy. 89 south to Gardiner and the north entrance to Yellowstone. That's a route that will take your breath away the first time you see it. It goes up Paradise Valley, the long, wide valley of the Yellowstone River, with the Absarokas on the east side and the Gallatin Range on the west. The Beartooths merge into the Absarokas as you near Gardiner, and if you look in your rear view mirror on a clear day, you can see the Crazy Mountains through the Livingston Canyon gap at the lower end of the valley, so at many points you are in a valley with four mountain ranges in view. The river is around 5000 feet elevation in the valley, and the mountains rise to over 11,000 feet on either side. As you reach the upper, south end of Paradise Valley, you enter Yankee Jim Canyon, the last of the whitewater canyons of the Yellowstone, before emerging into another wider valley nearing Gardiner. The other whitewater canyons of the river are inside the park, and not legal to run in boats, but Yankee Jim is class 4 whitewater at some levels. Above Yankee Jim, by the way, the Yellowstone cutthroats become more common, and once you get past the first big waterfall in the park the the cutthroats become the only trout.

Through the stone arch entrance to the park at Gardiner, which every tourist seems to feel it necessary to get pictures of themselves taken standing at the arch, you enter the park, up through Gardiner River's plunge off the higher plateau, and into Mammoth Hot Springs. There, we turned to head toward Tower and the Lamar Valley.

The road from Tower over Mount Washburn was closed due to a fire, but we drove the short distance up it to the store at Tower Falls, stopping at the great basalt cliff with the spectacular view of the Yellowstone River to take some pictures. At the Tower store, there was a big flock of bighorn sheep ewes and lambs, and two mule deer bucks, one of which was the biggest mulie I've ever seen in Yellowstone. Unfortunately, it was bedded down in brush right next to the parking lot, and I was unable to get good pictures of it. Most people there were totally oblivious to the fact that it was there.

Back down the road, we turned onto the road leading past Slough Creek, one of the more famous trout streams in the park, and then the Lamar River, another great stream...which was jammed with anglers. On the way, we saw some vehicles pulled over ahead, and then a ranger vehicle; and that always means bear. Sure enough, a big grizzly was feeding his way a few hundred yards off the road, too far to photograph. But I knew the lay of the land there, and knew that he was headed for a spot where the road bends behind a low hill. So I left the other people taking photos with their little cameras ("See, that dark spot is a bear!") and went around the hill, parking in solitude and waiting. Sure enough, in a few minutes the bear came into view, headed straight toward us. By the time it got within 200 yards, close enough for me to get decent photos with my big lens, the others had figured it out, including the ranger. At 75 yards the ranger made everybody get back in their cars. The bear came to within 20 yards of the road, then detoured around the cars, crossed the road, and wandered off away into the trees. I got great photos.

We stopped again in the Lamar Valley, which was full of anglers and bison, to briefly look for wolves through the binocs. Another guy was there with a spotting scope, and told us that there were two wolves across the valley. "Well, I'm pretty sure they're wolves. They don't move like coyotes." I picked them up, light, moving spots against the grass and sagebrush in my ten power binoculars, but I've seen a lot of coyotes and wolves, and I was pretty sure they were coyotes. The guy offered to let us look at them through his spotting scope, and one glance and I knew they were coyotes...their ears were too big and their muzzles too thin for wolves. I hated to disappoint him, so I didn't tell him they were coyotes.

As you reach the confluence of the Lamar and Soda Butte Creek, the Lamar runs off to the south and the road follows the smaller Soda Butte, up into a narrow valley between high, bare rock mountains, some of the most spectacular mountains in Yellowstone. We stopped at one point and glassed a mountainside where we usually see mountain goats, and sure enough there were three of them well up on the bare rock. Then we climbed up the road to the northeast entrance of the park and Cooke City. Cooke City is a small hamlet with a few hotels and tourist trap shops, but it looks more like an Alaskan village than something you expect in the lower 48. The park keeps the road open to Cooke City all winter to service the permanent residents there, and last January we drove up to Cooke City. The road outside the park is closed most of the winter because of deep snow, and the road through town was a snow canyon, with banks of snow several feet tall and great piles of snow covering much of the parking lots around town. We watched a gasoline tanker come up into the town then while we were eating lunch at one of the only two restaurants open all winter. It filled the storage tanks at the Exxon Station on one side of the street, and then went across the street and filled the tanks at the Phillips station!

From Cooke City, Highway 212 goes across a high pass with absolutely gorgeous views, and then drops into the headwaters of the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone. At one point there is a pull-off and picnic ground along the stream, which is crystal clear and easily wadeable, flowing through big gravel bars and among giant boulders, with a low waterfall at that point. You look upstream and see Pilot Point, a great rock spire at the top of the highest mountain in view.

Not long after that, the road forks, with the Chief Joseph Highway going right, southeast, toward Cody. 212 goes northeast and starts climbing. From here on it would be new territory for us. The highway started switchbacking up the mountain, past beautiful mountain lakes, up into where the trees start getting stunted and gnarly. And it continued to climb. It reached timberline, and from then on there was nothing but rock and short grass and remnant snowbanks and sky. And it kept climbing, one switchback after another. Nearly all highways in the west cross mountain ranges in passes, and some of them are high passes, but this road just goes over the top of the range. The highest point is just under 11,000 feet, and from there you can see the Beartooths spread out to the west. To the east you can see a LONG way into Wyoming, and to the north far into Montana and the lower country of the Yellowstone River as it flows all the way across Montana, the longest undammed river in the continental U.S. The views are amazing.

The highway starts switchbacking down the north slop of the mountains, along the side of Rock Creek canyon. It is one of the most convoluted series of switchbacks I've ever driven. The canyon is rock and forest, in many places unbroken forest, the creek far below shining silver in the sunlight, a very narrow ribbon of whitewater. Finally you reach the bottom of the canyon, alongside the rushing creek. And finally you begin to see signs of civilization again. Once we had taken the fork, there was only one small motel and store until this point, but now we left the national forest and lodges and campgrounds appeared. The creek is a good trout stream here, and as you near Red Lodge the banks are lined with houses and resorts.

We stopped in the waning daylight in Red Lodge, eating supper at a Mexican restaurant, and then drove on to a turn-off that would take us to Columbus on I-90, an hour from Livingston, our starting point. The full moon rose behind us as we buzzed across the interstate to our second home in Livingston.

It's a drive I'll take again soon, planning time to stop and hike in that alpine landscape. And if you are in the area, it's a drive you should certainly take, as well. It's some of the best scenery America has to offer.

[KCRIVERRAT]

Felt just horrible nobody posted on this. I love ya Al... you inspire me to read Zane Grey and practice my stick figure drawings. Someday... someday...

[FishinCricket]

Felt just horrible nobody posted on this. I love ya Al... you inspire me to read Zane Grey and practice my stick figure drawings. Someday... someday...

Bwah, ha ha...

Cerealy though, he kinda already said it all..

Al: At the risk of paying you a compliment, you are a great writer man.. I (sheepishly) admit that I read almost every word (and that's sayin sumpthin) you post in the topics that interest me.. If I could offer any critique at all (and I've no right or justification to do so) it would be to include some pictures!!!! don't get me wrong, you use great descriptive words and such, but some of those (literally tens of thousands of) pictures might bring a few more comments.. That is, if you're even concerned about that..

I'm off to fish the two rivers section of the Current, down to Blue Spring, wish me luck!!!

[Njardar]

Great write up, that trip is on my bucket list and I printed out your post for my wife to read. Sounds like a wonderful trip.

- Charlie

[Phil Lilley]

I missed it. I'll read it later today.

[eric1978]

I missed it, too. Great post. I hope I live long enough to one day make that drive.

[ness]

I didn't miss it, I just cut, pasted and saved it to my (private) collection of good stuff I pick up here and there. But, forgot to say thanks to Al. So, thanks Al!

[Gavin]

Nice write up...the Beartooth Highway is spectacular...definitely a must do if you are in that area.

[Al Agnew]

Yeah, I know I should post more pictures...it's mainly a factor of convenience. I have a little netbook which I use in the evenings to get on these websites. It's networked to my main computer, which I use in my artwork, but the netbook doesn't have Photoshop installed, so I can't re-size photos on it very easily. All my digital photos are on the hard drive of the big computer (and backed up on an external hard drive). Most are not re-sized to put onto this site. To post photos, I have to go into the studio, re-size them on the big computer and save them, before I can get them on this site either from the big computer in teh studio or pulling them off the big computer and posting them from the netbook. I need to see if this little netbook has enough capacity to handle Photoshop.

[eric1978]

Yeah, I know I should post more pictures...it's mainly a factor of convenience. I have a little netbook which I use in the evenings to get on these websites. It's networked to my main computer, which I use in my artwork, but the netbook doesn't have Photoshop installed, so I can't re-size photos on it very easily. All my digital photos are on the hard drive of the big computer (and backed up on an external hard drive). Most are not re-sized to put onto this site. To post photos, I have to go into the studio, re-size them on the big computer and save them, before I can get them on this site either from the big computer in teh studio or pulling them off the big computer and posting them from the netbook. I need to see if this little netbook has enough capacity to handle Photoshop.

http://imageshack.us/

You can do it at imageshack for free...no account or anything.