Beartooth Highway through alpine tundra
— — a country above the last trees.
Not only on a wall.
“The high plateau the highway crosses between the switchbacks and Beartooth Pass is alpine tundra, the southernmost large stretch of it in the United States. From roughly 10,000 feet up, the trees give out and the ground becomes a low mat of sedge, dwarf willow, and cushion plants holding scatterings of glacial tarns. In July the wildflowers run in short, intense bursts: forget-me-not, moss campion, sky pilot. The ground itself is rarely fully thawed; permafrost lenses persist under the surface even in August. from the studio
Beartooth Highway through alpine tundra, 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.
The Beartooth Plateau is a high erosional surface of Precambrian granite and gneiss, lifted to between 10,000 and 12,000 feet during the Laramide orogeny and scoured by Pleistocene glaciation into the gentle, lake-dotted top it carries today. US 212 traverses the southern edge of the plateau between Beartooth Pass and the Wyoming-Montana line, climbing through closed subalpine forest, then krummholz, then open tundra above roughly 10,000 feet. The plateau is the largest contiguous expanse of alpine tundra in the lower 48 outside the Colorado Rockies, and it sits within Shoshone National Forest on the Wyoming side and Custer Gallatin National Forest on the Montana side.
The growing season on the plateau runs roughly six to eight weeks. Snow cover typically clears the open ground by late June; the first hard frosts return by late August. Within that window the wildflower display is concentrated and short: alpine forget-me-not, moss campion, sky pilot, alpine avens, and Parry's primrose come and go in waves of two or three weeks each. Afternoon thunderstorms build over the plateau most summer days, often dropping graupel rather than rain, and snow squalls in July are routine. Permafrost lenses persist under the surface even at the height of summer.
The tundra stretch is reached from either direction of the Beartooth Highway and is roughly the section between the West Summit overlook on the Montana side and the Top of the World store on the Wyoming side, a distance of about ten miles. Pullouts along this run give access to the small tarns and short walking routes; the Clay Butte Lookout spur, an unpaved road off US 212 on the Wyoming approach, climbs to 9,811 feet for a wider view of the Absaroka Range and the Beartooths. The tundra surface is fragile; staying on durable surfaces matters more here than at lower elevations.