Pilot Peak and Index Peak twin spires
— — two spires the road keeps coming back to.
Not only on a wall.
“Two sharp granite peaks that rise side by side above the Clarks Fork drainage, visible from almost every bend of the Beartooth Highway and the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway. Pilot is the taller, the cleaner spire; Index sits beside it, square-shouldered. They are the landmark the early trappers used and the one most travelers stop their cars for, even when they hadn't planned to. — from the studio
Pilot Peak and Index Peak twin spires, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Pilot Peak and Index Peak stand together in the Absaroka Range on the Wyoming side of the Montana border, inside the Clarks Fork Ranger District of Shoshone National Forest. Pilot Peak reaches 11,708 feet and is one of the most recognisable summits in the Greater Yellowstone region; Index Peak, a short ridge to the east, reaches 11,313 feet. Both rise above the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River and are most often seen from the Beartooth Highway and the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway, the two paved approaches into Cooke City, Montana, from the east.
Both summits are exposed granite and metamorphic rock above tree line, part of the Beartooth-Absaroka Wilderness uplift. Pilot is the steeper of the two, a clean spire on most sides with a non-technical scrambling route up the south ridge rated Class 4; Index is a broader, more massive block with a longer summit ridge. The peaks were named in the nineteenth century by trappers and prospectors moving through the Clarks Fork drainage who used Pilot's distinctive shape as a navigation landmark on the long approach from the east, before the highway existed.
There is no maintained trail to either summit. Climbers approach from the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway via the Clarks Fork or the Sunlight Basin, on faint use-paths that gain over 4,000 feet of vertical. For everyone else, the peaks are a roadside view. The Beartooth Highway, U.S. 212, runs east from Cooke City over the 10,947-foot Beartooth Pass and is open from late May through mid-October. The Chief Joseph Scenic Byway, Wyoming 296, joins it from the south and stays open longer in fall. Both routes carry pull-offs sited on the Pilot–Index line.