Beautiful but Deadly

My vote for the most stunning mountain in Greater Yellowstone, and also the one I find most alluring of its technical peaks. Enlarge for better viewing. Pilot (left) and Index Peaks, two well-known Yellowstone-area landmarks, at dawn from the Beartooth Highway in Wyoming. Pilot Peak is a spire that rivals the Grand Teton itself in magnificence, and it is more difficult to climb. The easiest route is 5.6, but there is terrific exposure and terribly rotten rock, so bad that anyone but an expert climber may be putting himself at serious risk by setting and using protection here. Index is reputed to be about as difficult. Both mountains are in the North Absaroka Wilderness, which is one of the largest and probably the wildest of this country's wilderness areas outside Alaska. Absaroka Range, Wyoming-- July 2008