Custer Gallatin National Forest

Custer Gallatin is a sprawling forest that runs from the wild northern doorstep of Yellowstone all the way east to the pine-covered buttes of the Dakota plains -- more than three million acres in two very different halves. Up in the Beartooth Mountains it holds Granite Peak, the highest point in Montana at about 12,800 feet, and the Beartooth Highway climbs to nearly 11,000 feet on what the newsman Charles Kuralt once called the most beautiful drive in America. It's grizzly-and-mountain-goat high country on the edge of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with some of the best ice climbing in the country up Hyalite Canyon just outside Bozeman.

The place

Custer Gallatin is one of the most varied national forests anywhere -- more than three million acres stretched across southern Montana, reaching east into the pine buttes of northwestern South Dakota and brushing the Wyoming line up near Yellowstone. It comes from two forests joined into one, and it still feels like two: a rugged western mountain half along Yellowstone's northern edge, all glacier-carved peaks, alpine lakes and grizzly country, and a scatter of far-flung 'island' units hundreds of miles east out on the high plains. If you want big Rocky Mountain wilderness one week and lonely prairie pine ridges the next, it's all one forest.

History

The forest carries two names because it was stitched together from two. The Gallatin National Forest, on the west, dates back to around the turn of the last century and takes its name from the Gallatin River and valley -- named by the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805 for Albert Gallatin, Thomas Jefferson's long-serving Treasury Secretary. The Custer National Forest, to the east, is named for George Armstrong Custer, whose 1876 defeat at the Little Bighorn unfolded in this same corner of the country. The two were administratively combined into a single Custer Gallatin National Forest in 2014, though their older districts -- from the Beartooth front to the Ashland grasslands -- still keep their own distinct character.

Wildlife & plants

The mountain half is prime Greater Yellowstone country. Grizzly and black bears, gray wolves, elk, moose, bighorn sheep and mountain goats range the high peaks and valleys, and pronghorn drift the open sage below. The cold headwater streams hold native Yellowstone cutthroat trout, a fish that has grown increasingly rare across its old range. Out on the eastern plains units the cast changes -- pronghorn, mule and white-tailed deer, wild turkeys and prairie birds work the pine buttes and grassland, a reminder that this single forest reaches from alpine tundra all the way down to short-grass prairie.

Notable features

The crown jewel is Granite Peak, the highest point in Montana at about 12,800 feet (published figures vary a little) -- a remote, technical summit widely considered one of the hardest state highpoints to reach in the lower 48. It rises within the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, a vast stretch of high country the forest shares along the Montana-Wyoming line. The Beartooth Highway (US 212) climbs to nearly 11,000 feet at Beartooth Pass on a route the newsman Charles Kuralt famously called 'the most beautiful drive in America.' Closer to Bozeman, the Bridger Range holds the Bridger Bowl ski area, and Hyalite Canyon draws climbers from around the world to its frozen waterfalls each winter. The forest also wraps much of Yellowstone National Park's northern boundary, making it a gateway to the park through the towns of Gardiner and Cooke City.

Cool to know

• Granite Peak, Montana's highest point at about 12,800 feet, is often ranked among the very hardest state highpoints in the lower 48 to climb -- a genuine technical summit deep in the Beartooth backcountry, not a walk-up.
• The Beartooth Highway tops out near 11,000 feet at Beartooth Pass, and the TV newsman Charles Kuralt famously called it 'the most beautiful drive in America.'
• It's really two forests in one: the Gallatin, named by Lewis and Clark for Jefferson's Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, and the Custer, named for George Armstrong Custer -- administratively combined into a single forest in 2014.
• Hyalite Canyon, just up the road from Bozeman, is one of the best ice-climbing destinations in the country, with dozens of frozen waterfalls forming every winter.
• The forest stretches from grizzly-and-goat high country on Yellowstone's northern edge all the way east to lonely pine-covered buttes on the South Dakota plains -- alpine tundra and short-grass prairie under one name.
• It borders Yellowstone National Park along much of the park's northern edge, and the gateway towns of Gardiner and Cooke City sit right against the forest.