Beartooth Pass Vista

Beartooth Pass Vista is the summit pullout on US 212 at 10,947 feet, the highway’s highest point. Step out for an open sweep across the Beartooth Mountains: glacial cirques, rocky ridges, lakes and patches of snow. If you’re driving the Beartooth Highway, this is the summit stop to get out for, not just look at through the windshield.

The open alpine tundra keeps the view wide, and the summit marker gives you an easy place to stand for a photo. Snow can linger into early or mid-July. In late June and July, the tundra can also bloom with shooting stars, columbine and Indian paintbrush, so you may find flowers at the edge of the snowfields.

Use the marker as a foreground anchor, then step back enough to keep the ridges and sky behind it. For a wider landscape shot, leave a strip of rocky tundra along the bottom of the frame; that foreground helps show how exposed and high the pass feels.

Construction on the Beartooth Highway began in 1932, and the road was completed on June 14, 1936. Glaciers carved the cirques and ridges you see around the pass; alpine glaciers began shaping the range’s present landforms about 1.6 million years ago. Farther down the eastern climb near Quad Creek, zircon crystals have been dated as old as 3.96 billion years—a glimpse of the much older rocks beneath the highway, not a sample from the summit itself.

This is a roadside summit pullout, not a service stop. Food, drinking water and restrooms were not confirmed at the pass itself, so plan those breaks elsewhere along the highway.