Deer in a rainy campground -- Custer National Forest

There are five possible roads to Yellowstone National Park. They enter from all four points of the compass and they’re all pretty nice. But the hands-down nicest of them all, locals here in Red Lodge, Montana say, is the spectacular Beartooth Highway — which winds and climbs 68 breath-taking miles from here to the park’s northeast entrance.

Breathtaking not just because it’s so pretty, with a clear view of the 20 jagged peaks in the Beartooth Range that surpass 12,000 feet in elevation, but also because it’s kind of perilous, with a track record of ice-age-like snowstorms 12 months a year. The highway is only open 4-1/2 months a year and it’s the least traveled road to Yellowstone.

I badly wanted to reach the park on the Beartooth. But as Harley and I departed Red Lodge in the late afternoon on Wednesday, clouds began building on the western horizon. Ten miles further those same clouds coalesced into a thunderstorm — and let one rip. Then the rain came pouring down. I think it was just a few hundred yards further that two things happened almost simultaneously: a Custer National Forest campsite suddenly appeared and a bolt of lightning shot down. We chose the campsite.

So did one other traveler (video post to follow), and we spent the early evening sharing stories over a soggy campfire. The next morning, the rain was only intermittent. So I packed up Harley again to try once more and continued up the Beartooth. It immediately began raining in earnest. Half-heartedly we continued on. Seven miles further, where the road began to climb steeply through a series of hairpin turns, a Jeep that was descending flashed its lights at us and slowed to a crawl. We stopped too.

“You can keep going,” the driver said, “but in just a few more miles you’re going to run into five inches of snow on the ground.”

I thanked him sincerely for bothering to stop to tell me, and in driving rain Harley and I turned around — returning to Red Lodge to consider Plan B.