Yahoo Autos Montana's Beartooth Highway Is One of the Most Dangerous Roads in America
Last month, I concluded with a search-and-rescue expert wondering if he'd have to save me atop Montana's Beartooth Highway. As if I don't know what I'm doing.
First some facts: The Beartooth achieves 10,947 feet, which is 1000 feet above the tree line. It is 68.7 miles long and connects two locales you've never planned to visit: Red Lodge and Cooke City, Montana. Of course, Cooke City isn't a city. It's a raggedy block-long strip of ‘50s Psycho cabins, motels, and neon-illuminated saloons, one with a ‘70s Ford Maverick parked permanently on its porch.
The Beartooth was a Depression-era project completed in 1936, signed off by Hoover-and not the one who wore dresses. On average, 150 workers called gippos worked on the road daily. One name proposed for the road was the Dorris Stalker Highway, which was perfect but they didn't know it. The gents who oversaw its construction were J.C.F. "Doc" Siegfriedt, O.H.P. Shelley, J. McNutt, and G. Pyle. Pardon me, but that is the greatest-ever name for a law firm, particularly since the partners were sometimes serenaded by Art Lumley's Melodians. Not something you need to know.
The road was originally gravel and 14 feet wide. That's 84 inches per lane, suggesting some Chitwoodish two-wheel daredevilment, and the original maximum projected speeds were 20 to 30 mph. Until guardrails were installed, drivers were so terrified of the drop-offs that they often steered into the oncoming lane for emotional comfort. No end of body damage, cars and humans alike.
I've ached to drive the Beartooth since 1995, when I drove Charles Kuralt's CBS motorhome to its enshrinement in the Henry Ford Museum. Kuralt had just departed Montana-leaving behind a secret, long-term mistress, a fun fact for Charles but not his wife-and he told me: "The Beartooth beats any drive in America. If it's open."
A weekend blizzard in 1947 stranded nearly 70 Beartooth tourists, some in 15-foot drifts. Three required hospitalization and three Park Service employees were buried in what turned out to be their tombs. Mind you, that wouldn't happen to cautious me. I'd waited until June 15, the ides of warmth, when Car and Driver entrusted me with a 365-hp rear-drive Genesis G90. I know. Feel free to hum a bar of "Danny Boy."
As I departed Cooke City, the temp was 50 degrees, though falling a degree each mile out of town. I mentioned it to my wife, right before snow began pelting in flakes the size of Post-it Notes. The G90's tail squirmed and juked across the centerline. I glanced at Julie, but she was delving into a packet of pink Nauzene just as we passed a seven-foot wall of snow upon which someone had spray-painted "Butte Butt Rats." The G90's proximity sensors went berserk, and traction warnings lit up the IP, but what would be the point of looking at them? Julie's face resembled Mark Zuckerberg's during his congressional testimony. I tried to lighten the mood, mentioning, "American beauty on the left, natural splendor on the right," but in truth there was no view but of snow and more snow and inestimable whiteness.
That's when I noticed that the oncoming lane had vanished under who knows how much snow and who didn't know. If any other car was negotiating the mountain, we'd be sharing the same blurry ruts-yup, back to the original 84 inches of width-and any three-point turn would put the G90's arse into terror incognita, and that is not a typo. Sure enough, as I attempted a U-turn, the gummed-up G90 foundered. Instantly. Then descended the mother, father, and second cousins of all whiteouts. I had to open both side windows to see anything abeam, and the item right then abeam was a yellow snowplow the size of Martinique, a destination I was coincidentally conjuring. The plow driver got out and ran-ran, I say-to my window. "Go back," he implored, wagging a gloved index finger. "We just closed the highway. God." I agreed that God was somewhere nearby. Within 100 feet, maybe. Still, I've never been so grateful to any man since Larry Gartner tutored me for my SATs. I put the G90 in reverse to gather speed traveling backward down the mountain, then whipped a 180-degree handbrake turn without a handbrake. I wish someone could have seen it. Then I popped a Nauzene, too.
I followed in the plow's tracks. Even so, the G90's nose became its own plow, randomly lifting the front tires. To this day, I have no idea how much of the Beartooth Highway I covered. If deep space were white instead of black, that's where I drove. We were the last two people on the mountain.
Why do I keep driving into these arctic cataclysms? Every goddamn year. Aldous Huxley said, "That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach." So I assume the man possessed winter tires. But who would name his kid Aldous?
From the November 2018 issue
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