Days 7,8 and 9: Sperry Chalet Adventure

I anticipated this was going to be a highlight of our whole month-long trip, and it was. We arrived at the office of Glacier Guides bright and early..6:30am. We were all packed up and ready last night so it was easy in the moment. We had to pack light bc we were required to carry out everything we brought in, including all our garbage. 😳

Our group consists of our guide JD, and four other guests, ranging in age from a 10 year old girl, Elenor, who chose this trip as her ‘mother-daughter’ special birthday trip, to a geologist Tom, who studied Sperry Glacier over 40 years ago. Eleanor's mother was Katie and Tom's daughter's boyfriend, Saul, rounded out our 6. A quick word about JD. He has guided at Glacier Guide for I think, 11 years. He is the kindest human I think I have ever met. When he is not guiding, or working on his home or studying to become a physical therapist, he works at a school that specializes in troubled kids. He sees the good in everyone , everything and everywhere. We were very lucky to get him to lead our trip. ❤️

OK, back to the trip.....We went to a Ranch located at the base of the Sperry Glacier trailhead and were assigned a horse for the pack-in. Mine was ‘Maybe’ and Rick’s was ‘Kirby’. Our actual packs needed to be emptied into trail bags so our packs could be condensed into one larger trail bag another horse would carry. After much shuffling, organizing, paper-signing, and how-to’s from the Wranglers, we were off. 

We rode at a snails pace for about three hours up 3,000 ft in elevation gain in about 6.5 miles. (Note: we descend the same trail Saturday on our way out.) It was long and arduous and I am a better hiker than wrangler!  Ouch!  As you read yesterday :), the area burned in 2017 and that was why Sperry was closed for 2 years, to rebuild. Well, there is a special beauty in rejuvenating burn areas. 

Sperry Chalet itself is beautiful and the setting is extraordinary. The rebuild was done to duplicate the original. The kitchen building was spared in the fire and the stonework on the new chalet was also spared. It just needed reinforcement and tuck-pointing. How DID all those stones and timber get up there over 100 years ago! We went for an afternoon hike up to Mt. Lincoln Pass and had dinner, cooked by the Sperry Chalet staff. Nice! The accommodations are rooms with bed, and pit toilets in a nearby building, along with 2 sinks that have running water. No electricity so we counted on our headlamps. 

We went for an afternoon hike up to Mt. Lincoln Pass.

There were Mountain Goats everywhere. It turns out Mountain Goats have a salt deficiency and there is salt in human urine. Suffice it to say, we could tell which guests decided not to walk to the pit toilets in the nighttime and use the railing instead! My plan was 'no fluids after 5pm' which seemed to work for me!  

   

This was sunset!

The next morning was our big hike to Sperry Glacier! To technically be a glacier, three things have to be true: It has to be larger than 25 acres, has to be over 100 feet deep, and has to move on its own. Sperry qualifies. The hike ascends 3,000 ft in elevation over 4 miles. Then there is a 'game-of-thrones-like' wall that has a stone ladder cut into it. On the side of this ladder is an iron cable to help ascend. 

Once on the pass, there is another .75 miles to the actual glacier. It is not an 'official trail' of GNP, so there are only cairn markers (rocks with a metal post on top) to show the best way to make it to the glacier. We traversed snow fields, rocks bigger than trucks and scree that Dr. Glad referred to as 'fracture city!' ! But we made it! 

The next morning, dawn was incredible . 

We packed up our everything and headed back down to Lake McDonald. 

L to R:

Back:Jeanne, Rick, Tom (our geologist, vegan, Renaissance man living in France) , Saul (our state department rep, linguist, anthropologist) , JD our superior guide,

Katie (our preschool teacher and mother extraordinaire) and Eleanor (our 10-year old super star..nicknamed 'Little Mountain Goat'!) 

We ended the day with some wine on Lake McDonald!  Our epic mini-adventure

concluded!