They had Sperry Chalet looking better than ever, then it burned down

Kevin Warrington was feeling pretty good about the Sperry Chalet as he hiked down to the Going-to-the-Sun Road in August 2017.

He and his staff at the backcountry icon in Glacier National Park had just completed a host of renovations at the chalet, from wall hangings that dampened the noise between rooms to feet under the new bed posts to keep them from squeaking on the floors.

Warrington is no stranger to the chalet. He’s the third generation in his family to operate the complex under a contract with the Park Service. His grandparents Ross and Kay Luding had dug through the snow and even had to break open a window to get the place back up and running in 1954 after it had fallen to neglect and disrepair. The Great Northern Railway built the chalet in 1913. It opened to the public in 1914. But come the 1950s, the railroad didn’t want to run it anymore.

The Ludings saw a story in the Hungry Horse News that the Park Service was looking for a family to operate it.

The Ludings took up the offer.

And now Warrington had it looking sharp. As nice a place to stay as any, even if it was 6.5 miles from the nearest road.

“It was a beautiful as I’d ever seen it in my life,” he said during a talk in Kalispell last week.

The next day, Aug. 31, it was completely gutted by the Sprague wildfire. All that remained were the stone walls and chimneys.

Warrington is philosophical about the reconstruction. When he was allowed to view the remains it was no longer a chalet to him — it was a ruin.

The dictionary defines a chalet as “a herdsman’s hut in the Swiss Alps.” To Warrington, this is not correct, of course.

So as the rebuilding of the chalet has taken place, he still finds it difficult to visit. Because it’s not a chalet. Not yet. Not to him.

Make no mistake, he appreciates all the work that’s going into the chalet. He recalled the day crews from Dick Anderson Construction laid the foundation last summer. Every 15 minutes a helicopter brought in a load of cement and the crews went at it hard, working from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“It was nothing but shovels and elbows,” he recalled. An amazing feat. The crew never took a break. Warrington and kitchen staff finally took them up their meals.

“It was the most amazing day,” he said.

But in his heart, it was still not a chalet. The work continued through the summer. The staff at the chalet fed through crews through a grant from the Glacier National Park Conservancy. They formed bonds and friendships with one another. Portrait Photographer Amy Boring chronicled the rebuild with exquisite photos taken over the course of the summer and fall. A greenhorn from California, she never heard of the chalet before she slogged up there for the first time last summer.

Adele and Jeff Scholl of Gravityshots photography photographed it from the air. The early days their work was critical — people weren’t sure the ruins, though they had been stabilized, would last the winter.

Toward the end of last summer, as work on the chalet was getting close to being done for the season, Warrington said he went inside and it finally felt good again.

His definition of a chalet is now far more refined than the dictionary.

“A chalet has style, It’s graceful. Elegant. Classy,” he said.

The building isn’t quite chalet status yet, but it’s much closer.

This summer, contractors will be hard at it again. The goal is to have it completed by next fall and open by 2020.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do getting the detail right,” he said. “That’s the challenge going forward.”