It's been called the most beautiful highway in the world. That, as with most things, can be left to debate. What's not debatable, however, is that the Beartooth Highway, which runs from Red Lodge Montana to Cooke City Montana via Wyoming, is a great place to ride a bike.
I had the opportunity to ride part of the highway to the summit on my way west to the Tour de Blast. Back in the day I had led backcountry skiing trips in the area but had never been there in the summer, let alone with my bike. So when I made plans with the other Keepers to join them for the TdB, Frank suggested I detour south of the interstate to ride the Beartooth. Frank's suggestions, at least when it comes to cycling, are usually spot-on so I took him up on it.
I passed through Red Lodge, 5500 feet (1697m), and drove the highway to Cooke City, 7572 feet (2307m), the evening before my ride. This was a good opportunity to see what I was in for the next day. The road starts its ascent to 10,947 feet (3344m) right off the end of the main drag in Red Lodge. The road surface is phenomally smooth new blacktop which is barely wide enough for two cars to pass without pulling in the side mirrors. This was the case for 80 km over the pass and down about 1/3 of the other side. Thirty kilometers down on the Cooke City side of the pass, the road was under construction for about a 15 or 20 km stretch. Heavy equipment and road workers had the road torn up to one dirt lane for most of this stretch. It was at this point I had to make a decision. I either had to turn back and ride the Red Lodge side or drive back up through the construction in the morning and start the ride about 25 km short at the Top of the World Resort, 9400 feet (2865m) and ride to the summit from there.
I opted to drive back up from Cooke City in the morning. Although it meant considerably less riding it allowed me to ride the much more scenic side of the road. It's not that the Red Lodge side is hard on the eyes it's just the Cooke City side stays in the high alpine environment longer and is more dramatic. This side of the road is also steeper which I thought would be a more interesting test for my flatlander legs. As it turned out, the flatlander legs did fine on the average 10% grade. It was the flatlander lungs trying to suck oxygen at altitude that challenged me. I didn't remember being as winded during my backcountry skiing career. All it took was a glance at my right thigh and I was up the road without a problem.
The ride was spectacular. It was not a stretch for my simple mind to imagine myself riding the Passo di Gavia as I passed through corridors of snowbanks 3 meters high. Marmots stood and watched me pass by from their rocky perches. Tourists gave me strange looks and even snapped pictures as they drove slowly past in their climate-controlled SUV's (I was the only cyclist on the road that day for some strange reason). My Beartooth experience even came full circle as I saw a couple skiers hiking a ridge getting ready to earn their turns on an early summer corn harvest.
[dmalbum path=”/velominati.com/content/Photo Galleries/m.carlson@vcc.edu/Beartooth/”/]
All in all I'd love to go back and do it again from both sides and from the bottom. As it turned out, it was the perfect yin to the Tour de Blast's yang four days later. What the TdB lacked in weather and views, Beartooth Pass more than made up for in both categories. However, the TdB provided for great commeraderie with friends which was lacking on my solo ride up Beartooth. No worries, it's a rare day that all the pieces of a perfect ride come together and this day was, for me, as good as cycling gets.
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@Souleur
it's nice not only for the ride but pretty centraly located in the country. one could also tack on the Chief Joseph highway and Yellowstone and make for a fantastic 4-5 day cyclo-vacation. Perhpas a Velominati tour, summer 2011?
@Rob
damn me and my Garmin cap! point taken. i don't ride campy but a Molteni cap would be sweet. Perhaps I'll pick up a Brooklyn one or maybe BMC. Glad you like the article.
@Steampunk
So just after the ride I drove down through Silver Gate into Yellowstone and car-toured that for the day all the time wishing I had more time as there are fantastic roads to ride in the park, thing is though, as you know, Yellowstone is choked with fat people and rented RVs who are so busy looking for wildlife they may not see a cyclist. On my way home I took the northern route through North Cascades and saw a ton of cyclists, then continued through the Methow valley, again, stunning cycling opportunities. The pinacle though was making a stop through Glacier N.P. and driving the Road to the Sun. The summit was closed due to landslides caused by heavy rains this year so I was only able to drive up to within a mile or so of the pass. What a phenomonal road that would be to ride but the guvment doesn't allow cyclists past the flats as it's so narrow.
@Joe
Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in, er, I mean, uh, if you find yourself near southeast Idaho (or Jackson Hole, WY) on your endeavors look me up and I'll take you and yours for a ride "Around the Block"
@Marko
Oh, man! Don't stop: this is too good for my soul. Love Glacier and North Cascades. A lifetime ago, I wrote a thesis on the history of wilderness trail construction in the PNW, and made a point of doing a lot of "research" on the ground. I grew up a coastal Cascadian, but spent four years in the Inland West and grew to love that, too. Sounds like a great trip, all in all.
@Steampunk
Sounds like a cool thesis project, makes me wonder what you do. My thesis was about how the Makah tribe's (Neah Bay, WA) sense of place is brought up in contested terrain arguements related to public lands (primarily fishing and whaling but also Olympic N.P.). Great stuff. Like you, seems a lifetime ago but has no less importance to me now than then.
@Marko
I'm a university prof"”environmental historian who also dabbles in the history of science and technology. Have been trying to find the right angle to work up something on the history of cycling that would let me use grant money to buy a new bike. It hasn't happened yet...
you fella's thesis projects are alot better than mine. At least with you all you may have gotten out into the backcountry and ridden in your studies. Mine was exercise program benefits for stage IV congestive heart failure and primarily a meta-analysis which was alot of library time.
I am in flynn for summer 2011 out there if it goes
Nice ride report. Great pictures as well. Very cool.
Whooa, Steampunk, dude you should have broadcast that long ago with the peeps here I am sure your thesis proposal could be thought up in about 2 seconds. Lets see just off the top (probably too simplistic, I have no education but just to get the ball rolling):
Comparative weights of Pre war (WW I) racing bikes to contemporary carbon fiber bikes and why they weigh the same?
Or: Tire pressure and world record times: would early times be equal to current times if Dunlop's could have been inflated to 120 psi?
@Marko
Marko, awesome report. Makes me long for that ride again. My advice was 20 years old, but man those pictures look exactly like I remember it. I did the ride back and forth from Redlodge in two days; Rode Redlodge to Cooke; crashed there overnight with my mom and dad, ate pancakes at Outlaw Jim's the next morning and then rode back. There's a great outdoor burger joint there somewhere in Redlodge and a burger has never tasted so good in my life.
Why qualify it like that? I'm Dutch. Dutch == Awesome; Awesome == Always right; Frank == Dutch. So you can easily rewrite that to say, Frank == Always Right.
The math is sound.
@Steampunk, @Rob
Uh. Yeah. Jeeze. Rob, I like your start. I would go here: 1930's era, pre-derailleur bike vs. top of the line modern carbon ride. Measure same riders on both bikes in climbing, descending, and flat riding. Plot that against a table of measurable improvements in technology and speeds of racing. Based on that data, we can then extrapolate that the delta between that and today's speeds are due to improvements in diet, training, and doping.
BOOM. Problem solved. NEXT.
@frank
Kind of like when you suggested that you drive the rental car from the airport to the hotel in Geneva and we ended up on the pedestrian/trolley only mall in the city centre? I felt like the Griswalds on European vacation with 4 ski-bags strapped to the roof. Classic! I'll never forget that shit.