Mount Washburn summit fire lookout
— — a small stone room with a long view in every direction.
Not only on a wall.
“Mount Washburn rises to 10,243 feet between Tower Junction and Canyon Village, with a working fire lookout on the summit. Two trails climb to it: the gentler one from Dunraven Pass, the shorter one from the Chittenden Road gate. Both gain about 1,400 feet over roughly three miles. The lookout has a small public observation room on the ground floor, used by hikers for shelter when weather moves in, and a staffed cab above for the fire watch. Bighorn sheep ease across the upper switchbacks. On a clear day the Tetons stand a hundred miles south, small and exact. from the studio
Mount Washburn summit fire lookout, 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.
Mount Washburn is a 10,243-foot peak in the Washburn Range, on the northern rim of the Yellowstone Caldera. It sits between Tower Junction and Canyon Village in Yellowstone National Park, and is named for Henry D. Washburn, surveyor general of Montana Territory and leader of the 1870 Washburn–Langford–Doane expedition that helped pave the way for Yellowstone's establishment as the first national park in 1872. A fire lookout has stood on the summit since the 1930s; the current concrete-and-stone structure dates to 1940 and remains a staffed fire-watch station during the wildfire season.
Two trails reach the summit. The south route begins at the Dunraven Pass trailhead on the Grand Loop Road and climbs about 3.1 miles with 1,400 feet of gain on a wide, switch-backed grade. The north route follows the old Chittenden Road from a gated trailhead north of the summit, also roughly three miles up. The lookout has a public ground-floor room with windows on all sides, used as weather shelter and for orientation panels. The staffed cab above is closed to visitors. Dogs are not allowed on either trail, and the upper slopes hold snow into July most years.
At 10,243 feet, the air on the summit is roughly 70 percent of sea-level density, enough that visitors arriving from low elevation feel the last switchbacks more than the first. Storms build fast in the afternoon, especially in July and August; rangers recommend starting before 8 a.m. and being off the summit by early afternoon. Bighorn sheep summer on the upper slopes and are often visible from the trail. On clear days the view reaches south past Hayden Valley to the Teton Range about a hundred miles away, and east to the Absaroka peaks above the Lamar drainage.