The Folly of Assumptions

I love this photo for a variety of reasons. First of all, it is still one of the most beautiful places I've ever slept. It is located in Yoho National Park in the Canadian Rockies. After graduating from college in 1993, I went on a road-trip through Western Canada with my girlfriend and this is one of the spots we chose to camp. It also is a reminder to me of the folly of assumptions. The day we camped here, she and I planned to do a hike. We had two choices. We could either hike in about eight miles with all of our camping equipment and set up camp along the trail or we could leave our tent and gear positioned in this spot and do a 17 mile hike that looped back to starting point. We elected to do the longer, lighter hike. Here's where I made my first (faulty) assumption. I thought since the 17 mile hike was going up into the mountains, it would represent roughly a 50-50 split of ascent and descent. Wrong. The hike turned out to be approximately 15 miles of uphill walking, with about 2 miles of viciously steep return down a decline of loose scree. The next (faulty) assumption I made was that fire+wood=burning wood. Not so. This equation assumes the presence of oxygen. Yoho, as we discovered, exists at higher elevations. As I recall, she and I took turns blowing all of the oxygen we could find in our own lungs onto the smoldering (and probably wet) wood. We did get the fire going, a lovely meal was shared and then she and I took a post-dinner walk along this river. It was summer and we were quite far north, so the sun stayed with us until after 10pm and I was left in awe of the location and the tranquility of the weather. This would be yet another faulty assumption. A couple hours after we turned in, this tranquil weather would sour completely. Somewhere in the middle of the night, the wind whipped up and it began raining sideways. Due to the beauty of the location and the calm in which we found our spot, we had selected a tent site completely devoid of any protection or cover. The campsite was approximately half a mile from the car, so in the dark and stormy night it provided no haven for retreat. I think we both had to get out of the tent several times to batten down the pegs and the tent may have fully collapsed, I don't recall. I do remember finally making it through the night, the morning being clear and the two of us beating a hasty path to the nearest motel in Banff to make use of a dry room and my parents 'emergency' credit card.