Beartooth Mountains, Montana-Wyoming
Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
Location: 45o 01' 24" N, 109o 25' 43" W in Montana. Bend in the valley is about at 44o 59' 38" N, 109o 29' 48" W, just south of the Wyoming state line.
The late CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt called US 212, the Beartooth Highway, the most beautiful drive in America and it is hard to argue with him. The road snakes up the side of a glacial valley, over a plateau at 3200 meters (nearly 11,000 feet) and then back down just east of Yellowstone National Park. In this view we look up a U-shaped glacial valley. The shallow bowl on the far side of the valley at right is a cirque, a place where a glacier originated. We are high enough to see the top of the plateau, which was probably buried under ice but not deeply eroded.
Original Scene
(author's image)
Possible Coloring
Return to Geology Coloring Book Index
Return to Professor Dutch's Home Page
Created 30 September 2009, Last Update 15 January 2020