It didn't look at all promising. I could hear the rain relentlessly beating on the outside of the tent. The fabric flapped and strained as each fresh gust of wind brought more rain crashing against it. We were not going to get much sleep tonight.

"Maybe it'll be better in the morning", I suggested to Elisabeth, but my words didn't carry much conviction.

I never really fell asleep that night. The morning was slowly announced with an increase of green light inside the tent. I could still here the rain drumming on the roof. Our plan was to set off on an adventure today, an adventure to climb a mountain called The President. The problem was, adventures typically require lots of motivation to get them started and both of us were completely lacking in any of that.

"Lets go to Field and check the weather forecast", proposed Elisabeth. There wasn't much else to do; we were suffering from an apathy attack, so I agreed.

We drove the short distance to Field, which was the nearest village to our campsite. We had been camped on the border between Alberta and British Columbia, in the Canadian Rockies. 

"It's the Continental Divide, you see", the ranger in Field reminded us, "the clouds rise up over the mountains and dump all of the rain on this side. Its much drier in Alberta. Have a nice day..."

The weather forecast at the Yoho national parks headquarters sounded as preposterous as it was promising. The current, unacceptable weather, would give way to sunshine later, clear skies overnight and sunshine tomorrow. I thought snow was more likely than sun, even though it was August, but I went to negotiate a "back country use permit" anyway.

These permits are a strange thing to me, coming from the UK. Basically, if you want to get away from it all and hike miles into the back country, then you must first of all get a permit, second, pay money for it and lastly, make sure you camp at a "designated spot", where every one is camping! I am not sure that a similar system would work back home, where the national parks are free to begin with. I was already surprised at the daily charge I was paying, just to remain in the national parks here in Canada. I understand that the system is designed to minimize the impact that the millions of visitors a year have on the environment. I just guess it is a shame that it is necessary at all. The answer, of course, is to plan your hiking or climbing in more remote parts, but that is tricky on the first visit to a new area.

We were back at the campsite by midday and started to organize our equipment for the proposed trip. It was still raining hard. We looked ridiculous as we tried to pack our rucksacks on the back seat of the car, while standing outside. Everything went into plastic bags to keep it dry as it looked like it was going to rain all afternoon. If it did, then we would be drenched by the time we reached our destination, as it is four or five hours hike from the trail head. With all our clothes in plastic bags then at least there would be something dry to wear in the tent. Or so the theory went.

I went through a mental checklist to confirm that everything was packed; Dry clothing, sleeping bag, sleeping mat.

"You have the stove, Lizzie?", I confirmed.
"And the food", she replied.

Ice axe, crampons, rope, ice screws; I tried to think of everything we would need for the climb; Gloves, warm clothing for high on the mountain, helmet.

"Have you packed your head torch?"
"Do we have any bear cord?"

Our rucksacks looked enormous. I kept going over the checklist in my head as we drove to the trail head at Takakkaw Falls. We parked at the Whiskey Jack Lodge and sat staring out of the car windscreen. It was pouring with rain. We watched two people staggering back down the trail towards the car park. It was impossible to tell if they were male or female under the swathes of brightly coloured clothing that they were wearing. They were so drenched, it looked like they had fallen in a lake. As they started to peel off layers of saturated clothing beside their car, it appeared that they were a male and female couple. We watched them pack and depart.

Across the valley I could just see the Takakkaw Falls through the low cloud. They tumbled one thousand feet down the sheer side of the valley. I watched the plume of spray that danced in the wind and could just make out the glacial ice cap, high in the clouds, whose meltwater fed the mighty cascade.

"I think it's stopped raining", remarked Elisabeth.
"I think your right", I said, busily rolling down the window. I stuck my arm out and watched for the telltale signs on my upturned hand. None. The official verdict was no rain. I jumped out of the car. I could see a bit further down the valley now and I was mildly excited. I allowed myself to believe that maybe the weather forecast was true.

We shouldered our heavy packs and set off up the "Iceline" trail. This trail skirts the edge of the Emerald Glacier as it traverses from Yoho Valley into Little Yoho Valley. Our planned campsite was at the head of Little Yoho and at the foot of the route to the top of the President. I thought about the route that we had planned, as we hiked. The President is a 3138m peak (10293 feet) that we could easily climb in a day from our planned camp. All we needed was some good weather. Good weather was essential because almost all of the route above our camp would be on snow-covered glacier. Don't be confused, though. By good weather, I hoped for cold weather. We needed the sky to be clear during the night, so that the temperature would plummet. Then the snow on the glacier would freeze like iron and we could travel across it quickly and safely. If the weather did not co-operate, then we would not be able to climb the route. Warm heavy snow is dangerous. It hangs in cornices along ridges, ready to avalanche. It sags in a great wet mass on slopes, until it reaches a lethal critical mass. Worst of all, and most dangerously, it hides the narrow crevasses that can extend deep into the heart of the glacier. It hides them, but it does not provide enough strength to allow you to cross them safely. Traveling across a glacier in soft snow is like walking though a mine field.

The weather got continually better as we hiked. We entered the so called "alpine zone" above the tree line and mountain peaks started to appear in the distance as the cloud lifted. The sun broke through the clouds occasionally and cast a subtle yellow glow across the newly washed landscape. It was difficult not to stop every ten paces and take another photograph.

After about four and a half hours hike we were near to our destination. My back hurt from carrying the heavy load and all I wanted to do was sit down and rest. I stared at the rapidly flowing river that separated us from the "designated" camping area. We started to walk upstream, looking for a place to cross, when a friendly soul on the far bank directed us back downstream. He was already camped at the site and knew where the easiest place to cross was. We jumped from stone to stone until just three meters separated us from dry land. The three meters of water was bridged by a damp-looking log that was about four inches wide. The water was about two feet deep, rapidly flowing, crystal clear and looked very, very cold.

Normally we would have just danced across the log, hardly noticing the water that rushed beneath our feet, but our packs were heavy and we were tired. As a result we didn't feel fully in control of our faculties. We balanced, swayed and nervously crawled across the log. I felt a rush of adrenaline as I overbalanced and managed to jumped the last meter to the bank. I grinned at Elisabeth: we had arrived.

We soon had the tent pitched and mugs of hot tea in our hands, courtesy of the stove. We continued to marvel at the turnaround in the weather. The sky was now almost clear and had turned a deep blue colour as the evening sun was setting. I could see snowcapped mountains in every direction and I was happy. I just hoped that the weather held for tomorrow.

We sat and ate our dinner as I studied the skyline to our south. On the right-hand side stood the President and on the left, separated by the glacier, stood the Vice President, some 100 meters lower. I could see where our route would take us in the morning; up across the glacier to the pass between the two summits, then up the right-hand sky line to the top.

I was rudely awakened at four a.m. by the alarm on my watch. I was too tired to switch it off. It just kept bleeping and bleeping until eventually it stopped. I lay in a complete state of lassitude after the previous day's exertion. My legs felt like lead and I could hardly keep my eyes open. With difficulty, I reached up one arm and switched on my head lamp. It hung from the roof of the tent and the light blinded me, like opening the curtains when you have a hangover. My sleeping bag felt warm and comfortable as I watched my breath form clouds in the light of the lamp. Sitting up, I held my sleepy head in my hands. I tried rubbing my eyes, as though the action would wake me up somehow, but it didn't. Pulling on the zip to open the tent, I found it was stuck. I was confused, in my dream-like state and pulled again. Perhaps the fabric was caught? Then there was a tinkling sound, as ice crystals dropped onto my hand and the zip pulled free. It had been frozen solid. Suddenly I was wide awake and my heart started to beat faster as I stared out of the tent at a million tiny stars dotting the heavens. Moonlight bathed the land around me and sparkled as it lit tiny frozen water droplets on the grass. The weather had co-operated. We were in

business.

"Everything's frozen solid, Lizzie", I enthused, "Come on, get up, it's four a.m."

She was understandable less than enthusiastic.

My fingers stung in the cold as I tried to get some life out of the stove. I jumped back in horror as it spat four foot high orange flames into my face. I wasn't too familiar with petrol stoves. I guess they take more preheating in the cold. I fiddled with the controls, warming my fingers with the fire and soon it was roaring away, heating water. I munched on a cereal bar as I shone my head torch around in the darkness like an excited child. Mmm, apple and cinnamon, my favorite.

Elisabeth emerged and I handed her a mug of hot chocolate. 

"Did you use two packets?", she asked grumpily.
"Err, no", I replied cautiously.
"You filled it right to the top as well. It'll be revolting."
"Oops", I said, hiding my face behind the rim of my cup and sipping on my similarly prepared beverage. Miraculously, mine tasted fine. I guess she likes her chocolate more, well, chocolaty than me.

As we sipped our drinks we admired the display of stars above us. If you have lived in a city most of your life then you have never seen starts like this. It is a real eye-opener to actually see the white band of stars across the sky that is called the Milky. You can not actually make out any of the normal constellations, there are just too many stars. Its looks so magical; it doesn't look real.

It was a quarter to five when we set off. We strapped head torches to our heads, packs to our backs and tried to find that four inch wide log in the dark. It had looked menacing enough to cross the previous evening. Now, in the near-blackness, it was genuinely frightening. The water rushed under my feet in the inky darkness and I tried to forget that the log was coated with ice, as I ran across it. I was light on my feet this time and more balanced with my smaller pack.

The sky was beginning to turn from black to gray as we rounded a shoulder and started to climb up the moraines towards the glacier. A glacier is sort of like a factory that produces rock, or so it at first appears, for all around a glacier there are piles of rubble. This rock used to be part of the mountain but the glacier, over the ages, has torn it from its bedrock and carried it further down the valley. It is not the actual ice that does this. Rather, it is the rocks and boulders that are frozen into the ice. They act like teeth, embedded in the millions of tons of glacial ice, that pursue a relentless passage down the mountainside. To the casual observer it looks as though the very ice produces the rocks, depositing them in its wake.

It was about five thirty a.m. and a cold gray light covered the lunar-like landscape. We could not decide if it was better to have our head torches switched on or off. In the end we turned them off and picked our way slowly through the boulders in the half light. High up on the mountainside, we saw the first rays of the morning sun. We stopped to catch our breath. Elisabeth pulled a water bottle out of her rucksack and greedily guzzled water. I checked my altimeter. We were at about 2500m (8000 feet) and our current rate of ascent was 500 meters an hour!

"Hey, at this rate we'll be on the summit in about an hour and a half", I joked. "Half an hour of descent and we should be back in the camp by 8 o'clock!" We laughed at the absurdity of the statement. The land would get steeper and steeper as we gained height and it would be many hours before we were back at the camp.

"What time do you really think we'll be down?" Elisabeth asked.
"Early afternoon", I guessed, " like one o'clock. We have to get down before the sun starts to melt the snow and it starts to get dangerous on the glacier."

I took a photograph of the sun on the mountain with my camera precariously balanced on a pile of rocks.  "I’ll be lucky if that comes out", I thought.

The rubble slowly gave way to ice where the moraines and the glacier met. We stopped just short of the snow line and decided it was time to rope up.

Here is the theory: If you are traveling across a snow-covered glacier, then you are in danger. You can not see any of the crevasses, but there are crevasses there; as sure as eggs is eggs. If you fall into a crevasse then you are, at best, in serious trouble and, at worst, dead. Crevasses are cracks in the glacier, caused by the ice buckling in its passage over the uneven surface of the mountain. They can be hundreds of feet deep and only a few feet wide. I think you get the picture. So to decrease the danger, you tie yourself to at least one other person, using a rope. If you fall into a crevasse, the plan is that you are held on the rope, which is tied to a dead wait called your partner. That is when the fun begins. If you are unhurt after the fall, then you use two short lengths of cord that you have tied to the rope before hand, in preparation for just such a predicament, to climb back out of the crevasse. Your partner need do little more than complain that the weight on their harness is cutting off the blood to their legs. If, on the other hand, you are hurt and can not climb back out, then your partner has to rescue you. This can be horribly complicated. I would suggest that anyone interested in such things should learn the basics in the comfort of a controlled teaching environment, rather than high on the side of a bleak mountain, a days hike from the road, with his or her partner slowly but surely succumbing to hypothermia, in the frozen depths of a crevasse.

Of course, if the weather is on your side, and the snow is frozen like the Trans-Canada, then you are laughing. All you have to do is rope up for safely and travel fast. The idea is to get back across the snow while you can still drive a truck across it.

The sun was climbing higher in the sky and we put sunglasses on to protect us from the ultraviolet glare. It's something like ten times as strong at 3000 meters (10000 feet) than at sea level. You can quite easily go snow-blind. Both Elisabeth and I had felt as if we had sand in our eyes after we climbed Mount Athabasca (3500m) the previous week and it had not even been sunny that day. There is still plenty of ultraviolet light at that altitude, even under the cover of cloud.

As we sat, putting on climbing harnesses and crampons, we could see another climbing pair below us. They were still on the moraines.

"They look like they are arguing", Elisabeth remarked.

Sure enough, one of them turned on his heel and quite literally stomped back down the moraine. A lone figure approached us.

As she neared us, for it was a lady, she grinned.

"Can I tie into your rope?", she asked, "I've kinda had a disagreement with my partner."

It turned out that they had disagreed because she was going too fast. I didn't really understand. It seemed a trivial and silly thing to be arguing about so far from civilization. I didn't really believe her. She tied into the middle of our rope and we set of across the glacier. I wondered, as we walked, what they had really been arguing about. Had she insulted him for not keeping up? Were they good friends or had they just met? Were they lovers? That would give them a multitude of things to argue about, I'm sure! It seemed rude to ask her, but I could not help speculating. I finally decided that they were now ex-lovers. She had dragged him into the frozen wastelands of Canada to tell him it was over. It was a plan calculated to be maximally cruel. He now had a days hike back to the road, on his own to torture himself with thoughts of whatever it was that had broken them up. I wondered who it was that I had tied to the rope behind me.

The glacier got steeper and steeper. We moved slower and slower. One step at a time, until we reached the huge bergshrund. A bergshrund is the gap that forms between a glacier and the rock of the mountainside. We had to get across the bergshrund and onto the saddle in between the President and the Vice President. Luckily, the bergshrund was filled with snow on the right-hand side. We had to climb up a short vertical section of snow to get onto the "bridge" that allowed us across.

We sat on the saddle, tired but happy. The view in both directions was stunning. Hundreds of snow capped mountains in all directions. The air was so clear. The sky was so blue. I was in heaven. Our glacial passenger thanked us for the safe passage and set off up the mountain alone.  Rather her than me I thought.

"What about getting back across the glacier?", I shouted after her.
"I'll just follow our tracks", she hollered back, "I'll be fine, I'll ..", she continued, but the rest of her words were lost in the wind. She turned and continued up the slope. I couldn't decide if she was much more experienced than us, or much less. I was sure she would be fine but I wondered how I would feel if she feel into a crevasse on the her descent.

"Be careful", I shouted after her, but she could no longer hear me.

Elisabeth and I started to pick our way up the slope. It averaged about 45 degrees and was frozen solid. It was fun to tiptoe up the steep sections of ice on just the points of steel that were strapped to our boots. We purposefully chose the more difficult line, just for the fun of it. Climbing over rock steps, tip-tapping up steeper ice and just enjoying the climbing. I sat on a boulder, when the angle relented and took in the rope as Elisabeth approached me. She breathed heavily and collapsed in a heap beside me.

"Isn't it marvelous?", I gasped, in between gulps for air."

"It sure is", agreed Elisabeth.

"I wonder what they are doing at work right now?", I asked, thinking about the hustle and bustle that is my normal way of life. We both laughed. This was truly what fun is supposed to feel like.

Elisabeth set off in front, kicking her crampons into the slope, as the rope snaked away behind her. It became taught and I stood up and started to follow her. My leg muscles suddenly hurt. It was a rude awakening after the ecstasy of rest.

We arrived at a shoulder and could see that we were nearly there. The summit slope continued up to our right for another hundred feet to the top. I checked my altimeter and we were at 3110 meters. Elisabeth continued on and we were soon on top. The ground fell away all around us. We were filled with a feeling that you only get when you try so very hard for something and then achieve it. I took photographs in all directions. I held the camera at arm's length and took a picture of the two of us. Then we just sat in the snow and soaked up the view. We could not see a single sign of mans’ presence in any direction. All around us there was wilderness. All we could hear was the wind.

The sky was starting to cloud over very slightly. Thin, high level cloud was streaming across the blue sky. The tell tale signs of a front coming in; By evening it would probably be raining again.

It was freezing cold on the summit, so we started back down the mountain. It's at this point that you have to remember that most of the accidents on mountains happen on the descent. Getting to the top is only half of the adventure.

The slope that had been fun and easy to ascend, was slow and difficult to descend. We picked our way down. Usually facing forwards, digging heels into the ever-softening snow, sometimes facing backwards, slowly reversing steep sections. We were slow, but we were cautious. Eventually we were back at the saddle without incident. There was no sign of the woman who had been with us earlier. She must have already descended past us.

We climbed back down the bergshrund and just slid down the glacier on our backsides. Laughing and giggling in the sunshine, we left massive slide marks down the middle of the glacier. Elisabeth wanted to stay and build a snow man, but I reminded her of the plan; get off the glacier before the snow gets too soft. We were already sinking up to out ankles. We quickly descended to talus of the moraines and sat in the sunshine to remove crampons, rope and harnesses.

It was a leisurely walk back from there to our camp. I felt warm inside, as if I'd just received some really good news. It was like a weight had been lifted from me. I had set myself an objective and up until that point there was a doubt about whether it would be achieved without incident, but now it was over. Now I could enjoy the moment to its fullest.

Dinner at camp tasted particularly good that night. We had brought some sort of instant blueberry pudding with us and it tasted like nectar. I was just cleaning out the last bit of food from the pan, when I felt the first spots of rain. It was six p.m. We hid in the tent as the weather reverted to its previous pattern. Elisabeth made a Scrabble from the pages of her notebook and we lay in our sleeping bags and whiled away the evening. I couldn't help thinking how lucky we had been, to get the weather window that we had needed.

There was thunder and lightening all night. Scary.

Miraculously, it stopped raining in the morning. Twenty-four hours later, after four hours of hiking, three hours of driving, about six hours of sleep, many hours of flying, a taxi ride and some time spent in various airport terminals, I sat dazed at my desk in Manhattan, unable to fully comprehend why I hadn't just quit my job and stayed away. But I guess you just don't ....