CR67 Slip Road Southern summit s(u)

In his book "The Great Gates" Howard Spraque lists two historical passes in the lower southern part of the Bighorn Mountains: Fraker Pass and Dullknife Pass. Both of these play an important role in the fight between Chief Dullknife and the US army. Fraker Pass is on private ranch land, and it's not even clear if there is a road there. Dullknife Pass is a very low pass in between red hogback cliffs on the east side, and much too hot to cycle when I was there.

However, looking on the map, there is a road winding up the same eastern slope, apparently with more switchbacks than you could ever reasonably expect from an American road, where slicing through the mountain is always the preferred option. That is Slip Road. Unfortunately the surface is deep gravel. So this is also not the perfect bike ride. But the scenery makes an excursion worthwhile

The elevation profile for this point is included on the page CR67 Slip Road northern summit

Approaches

From South. Before Wy191, leaving from Kaycee, arives at the indistinct collection of megafarms, termed Mayoworth, a road branches left and heads immediately for the slip slope of the Bighorn Mountains. What follows is a staircase of tight switchbacks, that have a regularity like no other pass road that I have seen in North America. As already mentioned, unfortunately the surface is a deep gravel that makes riding a mountain bike difficult at best.

After about 2500ft of this the road breaks out into a high range land, bordered by stark monuments of dead trees and chunks of white sandstone caprock. The road reaches a summit point, from where you can see the next highpoint on the road. It certainly feels and looks like this is the higher of the two points. But the gps tells a different story.

From North. (described downwards) It would have been just as easy to build a road following the broad  bread loaf like ridge line to the southern summit. Instead the road builders decided on a short, extremely steep decent into a bare, shallow but still scenically interesting valley, lined with Mississippian limestone looking caprock at half height. I suspect that the name "slip" comes from this portion, because that's what you do as you go down. The description of the next uphill is on the CR67 Slip road southern summit page.

A Ride with this point as intermediate summit is on page: CR67 Slip Road northern summit.