Out there with Tom: A week's worth in Glacier: Sperry and Belly River country

Katie at a Sperry Glacier remnant

Above Comeau Pass

We saw tons of mountain goats

At one of the tarns below Comeau Pass

Getting to the top of the pass was tricky

We had two special trips in Glacier Park designed by Katie: two nights at Sperry Chalet and three days in the Belly River Valley on a backpack trip.

Both were magnificent trips. We reached Sperry via the nearly 14 miles route from Jackson Overlook through Gunsight and Lincoln passes. We used the Chief Mountain trailhead to reach Lake Elizabeth head and foot for overnight stays and a day hike to Helen Lake.

The highlight of the Sperry trip occurred on the second day when we hiked to Comeau Pass to view the Sperry Glacier.

The highlight of the Belly trip was Helen Lake, something I had only seen from the Ptarmigan Traverse, high above, and the Helen Lake Overlook on the Highline Trail.

We dealt with heat and smoke on both trips, but both abated enough that the hikes were enjoyable.

I had visited Sperry about a half dozen times in the past and had stayed there only one time, in 1985, in the old chalet before it burned in 2017. In my younger years I had done the 20 miles through-hike from Jackson Overlook to Lake McDonald and don't remember much trouble with it. This time, however, I barely made the chalet because I had so badly dehydrated in the withering heat. Or maybe becaus

e I've aged significantly since my last try. I had also been there on a climb of Mount Edwards with the Glacier Mountaineering Society.

The chalet has been beautifully rebuilt in its original style. The stay there is expensive: $222 per night, per person. The food was plentiful, but not particularly delicious.

The trail through Gunsight Pass looking down on Lake Ellen Wilson is a must-do as it flanks Mount Jackson and offers exceptional views of the many-striped and colorful Gunsight Mountain.

But it is hard to beat the trail construction on the way up to Comeau Pass that culminates in a stairway cut into the rock headwall.

On top there are amazing views of the glacier, its remnants and mountains in all directions.

The 6-mile hike down 3,600 feet to Lake McDonald is through an old burn and not terribly interesting.

As usual in Montana we bumped into people we knew at the chalet: Jake Bramante, the Glacier map maker and hiker who climbed Edwards the day we did Comeau; the woman who runs the Granite Park Chalet, who remembered us, Kathie Larson Aasheim; and a former colleague at the Great Falls Tribune, Kathy McLaughlin and her sister Beth. Kathy went on to become a foreign correspondent in China. Beth was Montana's Supreme Court administrator.

The Belly River ranger

The packs were oh, so heavy

Katie in Helen Lake below Ahern Glacier

We had a group of seven of us on the trip into the Belly.

It seems as though the Belly has become a regular backpack destination.

Smoke obscured our views going into the Belly and a light rain coming out.

I had backpacked into Lake Elizabeth at least a half dozen times in the past 40 years, but had never gotten into Helen Lake. There are tremendous views of Many Glacier's Mount Wilbur and Iceberg Peak and Ahern Pass. We hiked just below the mighty Mount Merritt with its Old Sun Glacier and its many waterfalls , viewed Ipasha Glacier on the side of Mount Ipasha and saw Ahern Glacier emptying into Helen Lake.

I was particularly thrilled to see Merritt from this angle, a peak I had climbed from Mokowanis Junction more than 25 years ago and the famed, adjacent and unclimbed Lithoid Cusp shard.

It was fun to pick out the high mountain goat trail that is the Ptarmigan Traverse high above us.

I was quite pleased I could still handle hikes and backpack trips like this at age 77.