At over 9k’, Beartooth Campground sits at the “Top of the World”. Beartooth Pass is a stone’s throw away. With trailheads from the campsite shooting up to high mountain ponds and beyond, and the 1,000,000 acre Absoroka Wilderness just to the north, it was the perfect willow-bound and solitary setup for some awesome fishing and hiking opportunities.
The road is the trip, truly. Out of Cody runs the Chief Joseph Highway, winding its way upcountry past Heart Mountain and into the Pilot Index.
The road finally spills over Dead Indian Pass, down into the bowl carved by Clark’s Fork River. Mountain gods and shadowed crags were evidence of the power of the river to shape the landscape.
Rebecca with a wheel in the ditch, yet calm as a proverbial cucumber.
Campsite 19, at the end of the campground, and arrived at only after jimmying the rig around an illegally -parked camper. We’d already been turned away from a packed Island Lake, so got super lucky with this, the last site at Beartooth. With a swiftwater slough just outside the door and fluttery aspens overhead, it was idyllic for crisp morning yoga and campfire-cooked steaks.
