HD 525 covers the Beartooth Plateau—one of the most dramatic alpine landscapes in the lower 48 and some of the highest, harshest country in Montana. Elevations run from about 6,000 feet on the canyon mouths up to over 12,000 feet on Granite Peak (the state high point at 12,807 feet) and a series of nearly comparable peaks. The Beartooth Plateau is essentially a vast, wind-scoured alpine tundra moonscape sitting above 10,000 feet for thousands of square miles—granite and gneiss bedrock, hundreds of glacial lakes, and a weather environment that can produce snow in any month. The drainages climbing toward the plateau (Rock Creek, the East Rosebud, the West Rosebud, the Stillwater, the Boulder, Slough Creek) are deeply U-shaped glacial valleys with spruce-fir and lodgepole forest below treeline. Elk live the upper basins and migrate down through the canyons in late season; mountain goats and bighorn sheep on the cliffs and plateau edges; mule deer and moose in the timbered drainages. Custer-Gallatin NF and the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness make up nearly all the country—the wilderness bans motors past the boundary and the plateau itself is essentially all wilderness. US-212 (the Beartooth Highway) climbs spectacularly across the plateau between Red Lodge and Cooke City but closes seasonally with snow, typically by mid-October. Once the highway closes, access is by long backcountry approach from canyon trailheads. Red Lodge has full services; Cooke City is a small mountain outpost with gas and motels at the southwest gate. Cell service is gone past the trailheads. The pack-out is real wilderness work and the country can kill you in a fall storm; this is the upper end of physical commitment for any MT elk hunt.