Dubautia menziesii is an upright (erect) shrub, reaching heights of 0.5 to 2.5 meters. The stems are rigid, robust, ascending, woody near the growing point, and conspicuously and persistently white hispid with appressed or spreading hairs, often also glandular glutinous. The leaves can be ternate, opposite, or alternate, ascending and imbricate, crowded to lax, and spreading. They are coriaceous, mildly balsam-scented when fresh, narrowly elliptic to ovate-elliptic or oblong-lanceolate, 2 to 5 cm long, 4 to 17 mm wide, 3-nerved or rarely obscurely 5-nerved. The surfaces are glabrate to somewhat rough hispid, occasionally markedly glandular glutinous, with entire or minutely 1 to 4-toothed margins in the upper half, sometimes conspicuously revolute, rigidly hispid-ciliate or spinulose-ciliate, with an acute to obtuse apex and a rounded to slightly attenuate-truncate base. The flowers are arranged in inflorescences, with the heads usually 5 to 35 in subcompact to very lax, pyramidal to usually narrow, oblong, often deflexed, racemose or paniculate inflorescences 2 to 20 cm long and 2 to 15 cm wide. The peduncles are white villous and often glandular, with ultimate ones usually 3 to 20 mm long or occasionally up to 60 mm long. The receptacle is high-convex to broadly conical, with a false involucre consisting of a single series of 6 to 14 peripheral, strongly connate receptacular bracts 6 to 10 mm long, usually villous to appressed hispid, often also glandular. The florets are yellowish-orange, usually 4.5 to 6.2 mm long, glabrous, and eglandular. The pappus usually consists of 15 to 23 very narrowly linear, ascending-setose bristles, 5 to 6.5 mm long. The fruit is a simple, dry achene (cypsela), usually 4.5 to 6 mm long (9 to 11.5 mm long including the pappus), glabrous to sparsely hispidulous or villosulous. It is found in high-altitude scrub or alpine desert vegetation at elevations ranging between 800-3,075 meters.