The most scenic route in America

On Sunday afternoon, in the Cody cafe, we noticed on the radar that another storm was comming, so we sat it out for an hour, then decided to head over the mountains before it got too late. The plan was to ride up Chief Joseph Highway (120) to the Beartooth Highway (212) to Red Lodge. My brother and I took this route last summer from the north, so I knew the kind of scenery I was in for.

In my opinion this is the most scenic route in American (we'll ride the second most scenic route later this month ;-) ). Between 120 and 212 there are snowcapped mountains, alpine lakes, waterfalls, forests, deep valleys, you name. The pass itself is at 10,800 feet.

There was quite a bit of traffic today which slowed us down significantly. Yet that's not all bad - we got a chance to spend more time enjoying the views. Occasionally we would get wet, then dry out, and there were lightning strikes within a few miles of us.

The top of the pass was barren. It is above the treeline and temperatures had dropped to 48F. We had anticipated it going to 45F so we weren't complaining much. Just enjoying the views.


As we started the descent to Red Lodge we pulled into a rest area. "Gotta pee?" "nope" "Ok let's keep going". We get a 1/2 mile down the road .. and it starts to hail.

This was no fun. We had to negotiate a handful of corners at very slow speeds before there was a pullout. I wsa surprised at how well the tires pushed the hail out of the way and stuck to the pavement, but just when we were going to stop the tires slid a little. The make matters worse, putting our feet down meant first scraping the hail away.

We waited about ten minutes for the hail to stop. We just sat there behind that minivan and waited. In the meantime two or three motorcycles passed on and continued down the hill, all Harley's with leather vests and do-rags.

While it hailed the air filled with an intense aroma not unlike gin. I'm guessing that the hail was breaking sage and spruce branches as it fell.

The hail was also hitting the rocks above us, and on a couple occasions it created small rock slides.

The irony is that if we had simply taken a bio break at the rest area, we would have been under shelter and off the bikes. Or if we hadn't been held up by the slow cars, we would have been off the mountain before it hailed.



The hail stopped after 5-10 minutes. We waited for another 5-10 minutes for several vehicles to come off the mountain and clear a path for us, and for some of the hail to melt.

Red Lodge came and went, highway 78 saw us through to the end of the day at a campground in Columbus, MT.