Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Across the road to the south is a service road with a wide parking area at its start. The out-
standingly large glacial boulder on a short trail from the parking area has historically been
called Frog Rock for its crouching frog shape. If you get close you can imagine a frog's front
leg and right eye and perhaps a tongue etched on the Boulder.
This service road is used by skiers in the winter to connect with Blacktail Plateau Drive
about a mile to the east. Road planners throughout the park's history have always tried to keep
the necessary reserves of road maintenance materials out of sight of the Grand Loop Road.
9.5/8.6
Beginning of
Blacktail Deer Plateau Drive,
a section of the former tourist road. This
7-mile (11 km) unpaved one-way road is closed at night, after storms, and all winter. The first
road built through the area, it follows a tortuous route through the hillsides, climbing 500 feet
(152 m) higher than the four-season main road.
Fireweed changes to its fall colors under lodgepole snags.
If you take Blacktail Plateau Drive, you'll pass several fine stands of aspen trees and catch
views of the surrounding mountains. In about 4.5 miles, the road descends steeply into a
small canyon or gorge The Cut). The nineteenth-century Bannock trail went through here,
as did the 1870 Washburn-Langford exploration party. Devil's Cut was the name used by Su-
