About A Road
Highway 212, better known as the Beartooth Highway (or the Beartooth Pass, the Beartooth Scenic By-Way among others), was originally built by the CCC (Civil Conservation Corps) under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The highway is now a popular tourist destination reaching over the Beartooth Plateau where the world seems to drop off into an open view of the mountains. Only accessible during the summer months from Memorial Day and closing in mid to late October depending on the weather, the road offers stunning views and trailheads for bigger adventures.
A Road Through the Wild is an interactive 360 experience that follows along the path of the Beartooth Highway, named America’s Scenic By-way. The road is bookended by Cooke City, MT and Red Lodge, MT. Both communities steeped in the history of the area are located to the northeast entrance of Yellowstone National Park.
Visit locations along the highway to see the scenery the Beartooth Highway offers and learn about the history and natural history of the area. You may even find hidden locations of off the beaten path.
A Road Through the Wild is the thesis project produced by Liz Wilk as part of the requirements for completing Montana State University’s MFA in Science & Natural History Filmmaking, a course created and designed for teaching scientists to become filmmakers while pushing the boundaries of science and natural history film.
A mountain goat rests between boulders on Beartooth Plateau while looking directly into the camera.
About 360/VR
At a time when the environment is drastically changing due to human activity, 360 videos can help to record the changes by fully documenting an environment rather than one small 2-dimensional window of the world. 360 can also show how climate change is impacting the land on a larger scale by putting the user into that environment. Therefore, one of the goals of A Road Through the Wild is to record the area at the time of shooting. Things change and can happen drastically. During the course of the project, a glacier I hoped to film was designated as a snowfield after years of melting leaving only a few left in the mountains nearby Yellowstone.
An additional goal of A Road Through the Wild is to look into how 360/VR experiences can allow those unable to physically travel to these locations, to virtually visit them. How can one appreciate and connect with the land if they cannot experience it? Accessibility, not only to wild places part of public lands but to 360/VR experiences and information, is an area I am interested in.
One of the main purposes of this website is to deal with accessibility to A Road Through the Wild. While the best way to see the experience is through a VR headset, the majority of people do not own one mainly due to cost. Cost of a computer system that can handle VR, but also the cost of the headset itself. Therefore, I chose WondaVR specifically for the purpose of not only having the ability to put the project onto at least an Oculus Go, but also to have it accessible by smartphone and browser through this website. This experience is for everyone.
Note: I’m still learning about accessibility and ADA compliance. My goals for the future are to learn and implement ADA accessibility into 360/VR experiences.
