Ten Sleep Canyon and the Cloud Peak Skyway

Ten Sleep Canyon is a deep, narrow cut on the west side of the Bighorns, and the story it tells is written in stone. The highway runs at the bottom beside a creek, and on both sides rise cliffs of limestone and dolomite, pale gray and cream-colored rock laid down when this whole region lay under an ancient sea. Over millions of years water carved the canyon down through those layers, so a drive up it is a drive back through deep time, one rock band at a time.

In recent decades the canyon has become famous for something else entirely: rock climbing. The steep, pocketed limestone walls turned out to be some of the best sport-climbing rock in North America, and climbers now travel from all over the country to spend weeks camped in and around the canyon. Even if you never touch the rock, you may spot tiny figures high on the cliffs, and the little town of Ten Sleep has grown a friendly climbing-season buzz because of it.

Above the canyon the road keeps climbing until it reaches Powder River Pass, at 9,666 feet the high point of the byway. Up here the world flattens out into the broad, green, almost gentle upper surface of the Bighorn Mountains, a landscape of meadows, small lakes, and stands of spruce and fir that feels a world away from the dry country far below. To the north rises Cloud Peak itself, at 13,167 feet the tallest mountain in the whole range, often holding snow in its high bowls into summer.

This top section runs through the Bighorn National Forest, and it is dotted with campgrounds, picnic spots, and trailheads that lead off toward the Cloud Peak Wilderness. It is prime country for a short leg-stretch hike, a picnic with a big view, or simply pulling over to breathe the thin, cool, pine-scented air. Wildlife is common up here, from deer and moose to the occasional herd of cattle grazing the high meadows, so the driving is slow and the looking is easy.

The whole point of the Cloud Peak Skyway is to take it slowly. The 47 miles between Ten Sleep and Buffalo can be driven in well under two hours, but that misses everything. This is a road for stopping: for the canyon overlooks, for a walk to a forest lake, for the view from the pass, for the small pleasure of watching the country change completely around you as you climb.

Because it is a high mountain crossing, the Skyway is really a warm-season drive, best from late spring through early fall. Snow can dust the high country in any month, and the pass is exposed to sudden weather, so it pays to check conditions, fuel up in town, and bring a layer even on a hot day at the bottom. Do that, give it half a day, and you get one of Wyoming's finest mountain drives, bookended by two small Western towns worth a stop of their own.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.