The peak is located in the Beaverhead National Forest and Taylor Hilgard parcel of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness area.

Bear and Indian creeks are tributaries of the Madison River with headwaters on the eastern and northern face of Sphinx Mountain.

The first recorded ascent was on July 30, 1913, by Anton W. Asmuth, George Belchic, Stanley H. Wardwell, and someone named Kimball who were students from the Harvard Summer School of Geology.

A second recorded ascent was made on August 1, 1919 by R. B. Hevy, John H. Hall Jr., Robert E. Crosby, and Henry J.

[3] Sphinx Mountain may have been ascended during the 1880s and 1890s by geologists Frank Tweedy, Edward Douglas and or Albert C. Peale during their topographic surveys of the Three Forks quadrangle.