I took off early from Sheridan knowing that this was another high-mileage day. It was pretty chilly and only got colder as I climbed the foothills of the Bighorn Range. I vaguely knew these mountains were here, but only because I’d picked a really squiggly line when choosing the route. What I didn’t realize was that the squiggly line as a mountain pass that would take me up over 9,000 ft to where the snow hadn’t melted yet.
The views were gorgeous and the riding was even better, both on the way up and on the way back down the other side of the range. After a swift descent back to the floor of the great plains, WY looked a lot like it had for most of the previous day and I settled in for a long, flat ride to Beartooth Pass in MT.
After an hour or so on the valley floor, I picked up a bit more dirt and and headed off onto what I soon realized was an oil & natural gas access road. There were huge oil derricks along with signs warning of potential toxic gases. The road lasted longer than I expected and was another great chance to get a feel for how the Norden handled in the dirt. After the natural gas extraction the road drifted into grasslands and grazing land for cow (with a bigger overlap than I expected, given said warnings about toxic gases). Probably the coolest thing was watching the snow-capped mountains in the distance slowly coming nearer over the course of a few hours riding across the basin.
Eventually I hit pavement again near and crossed the MT border, where I turned West and headed towards Beartooth Pass, but not before another little unpaved stretch through the montains. I also had a chance to hit up Red Lodge, a busy mountain town, for much-needed camping food for the night.
Beartooth Pass came up shortly after Red Lodge and I really have no words for the scale and beauty of it — this is another day where I can’t wait to get home and start putting videos together to show in the incredible views and road up the 10,947 foot pass. The pass was much steeper and switchbacked climbing up the MT side, but the WY side descended down through snowbanks and barren boulder fields with still-frozen alpine lakes. It was a landscape I’d never experienced before.
The road continued to be spectacular on the way into Yellowstone, descending slowly while becoming more forested. I hit the entrance faster than I expected to, around 2pm, and my GPS said I still had 60 miles to go to reach camp. The east side of the park was full of ridiculous views and larger-than-life geography. Massive valleys, towering peaks, and huge rivers with bison herds that all seemed to go on for hours. I didn’t stop for any photos, but I’ll have pretty good footage to cut together of the way in.
Unfortunately traffic started to pile up and I got stuck in traffic due to an accident for over an hour. While I entered the park right around 2pm it was 6pm by the time I reached camp. The scenery defintely helped give me some patience, but it was a long day and I was pretty much beat by the time I got to camp. Temps got down into the low 40s overnight and I was glad for all of the layers of my sleep system.
