Driving the Bear Tooth Highway, What! Snow!!!

We have seen information on the highway that leads from Red Lodge to the northeast entrance to Yellowstone. It is described as a scenic drive with pretty overlooks and lots of switchbacks. If you are longer than 40 feet in length,  you are not supposed to drive on this section of highway. You would not be able to turn and keep to your lane on the switchbacks.

They were not kidding about the switchbacks. In fact looking at the GPS, it looks like a a ribbon was dropped and fell looping back and forth. Pictures do not do the road justice and at one point on the road 1 mile of forward progress requires 8 miles of switchbacks and increases altitude from 5,000 feet to the top of Bear tooth peak at 10,900 feet.

Because rock slides are common, they have put up barriers to stop boulders from crashing into the road.  They look like gigantic chain link fences. The "links" are made of loops 1 foot across with 1 inch diameter metal.  There was plenty of evidence that the road had been recently destroyed by huge boulders and repairs made to the roadway.

Looking ahead, we could see the road was going to be interesting.  On many of the switchbacks, I was turning the wheels almost all the way to stay on the road.  The overlooks gave some spectacular views of the valley.

Then there was SNOW!  On August 31, 2020, it was snowing!

We could see that snow was also falling in the valley below.

As we were driving up to the next pullout and discussing the weather conditions and as to whether we should we continue when we passed a snow plow in the opposite lane - with the plow down.  He was pushing ice off the road.  Yes, it was definitely time to head back down the mountain. This is the first time in my entire life that I have seen a snowplow actually being used.

Even at the next stop which is 2 thousand feet lower, it was snowing. After getting back to the RV Park, we talked with the owner about what happened. She told us that is was good that we came back down because at anytime they could close the road and we could have been stuck up there until the next day.