HD 535 covers the southwest corner of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness around Cooke City and Silver Gate—the country between Yellowstone National Park's northeast gate and the Beartooth Plateau, with the Stillwater River and Slough Creek headwaters and the Sunlight Basin Wyoming-side approach. Elevations run from about 6,800 feet on the Silver Gate-Cooke City corridor to over 12,000 feet on the wilderness peaks (Granite Peak's southwest ridge and surrounding cirque country). The country is high, glaciated, and remote—spruce-fir and lodgepole forest below treeline, alpine tundra and granite cirques above, with hundreds of high lakes and a weather environment that does what it pleases. The Beartooth Wilderness encloses nearly all the unit. Yellowstone National Park borders on the south—a hard line you do not cross with a rifle. Elk migrate out of the park into the wilderness in late season; mountain goats and bighorn sheep on the cliffs; mule deer in the timber; and grizzly bears throughout—this is core Greater Yellowstone bear country. Custer-Gallatin NF and the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness with Yellowstone NP forming the south boundary. US-212 (Beartooth Highway) provides the only paved access through Cooke City and across the Beartooth Pass; the highway closes seasonally with snow. Cooke City is tiny but has gas, motels, the Soda Butte Lodge, a couple of cafes; Silver Gate is even smaller; Red Lodge is over the pass to the east; Gardiner is west through Yellowstone NP, but you cannot drive through the park with a rifle in season—plan accordingly. Cell service is gone past Cooke City. The wilderness and bear-country logistics are serious. Hire stock or train hard; the pack-out is no joke.