Mountain goat on Beartooth ridge
— — a white animal standing still on a long wind.
Not only on a wall.
“The Beartooth Highway crosses the Wyoming–Montana line at 10,947 feet, the highest paved road in the northern Rockies. Above tree line, the plateau opens into tundra: cushion phlox, weathered granite, small turquoise lakes still half-frozen in July. Mountain goats turn up on the ridgelines and the road cuts, white against grey rock, often alone. They are not native to the Beartooths; they moved in from neighbouring introduced populations over the last few decades. Most travellers driving the pass do not see one. The ones who slow down at the pull-offs, especially early or late in the day, sometimes do. from the studio
Mountain goat on Beartooth ridge, 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 Highway is US Route 212, a 68-mile scenic road from Red Lodge, Montana, to the northeast entrance of Yellowstone National Park near Cooke City. It crosses the Beartooth Pass at 10,947 feet, the highest paved elevation in Wyoming and in the northern Rockies, on the border between Park County, Wyoming, and Carbon County, Montana. The road was completed in 1936 and designated an All-American Road in 2002. The plateau it crosses is part of the Beartooth–Absaroka Wilderness and the Shoshone and Custer Gallatin National Forests, with more than twenty peaks above 12,000 feet and dozens of small alpine lakes.
The plateau sits above 10,000 feet for many miles, well above tree line. Snow lingers in the road cuts into July, and the season for through-traffic is roughly Memorial Day weekend through mid-October, with frequent weather closures. Wildflowers including alpine forget-me-not, moss campion, and cushion phlox peak in late July. Mountain goats favour rocky ledges and wind-scoured ridges where predators struggle to follow; they are most often seen in the cooler ends of the day. The Beartooth herd is a non-native presence, descended from introductions in adjacent ranges that expanded through the plateau in recent decades.
Above tree line the wind is the dominant sound on most days, and the silence between gusts is unusual for a paved road. Cell service is intermittent or absent through most of the high section. Traffic is light by national-highway standards, especially in the early morning before tour buses move between Red Lodge and Yellowstone. Pull-offs at Beartooth Pass and Vista Point are unmarked beyond signage, and the small lakes a short walk from the road, including Twin Lakes and Long Lake, often hold the wind in their lee when the ridges do not.