Of all my outdoors experiences I’ve perhaps never felt as alarmed as one evening in the Rockies.

We woke up to find the entire world shrouded in a thin layer of mist and rain. As for the sun, not even a faint outline was visible anywhere. The first event to throw a wrench in our perfectly planned trip was the breaking down of our gas stove. No matter what the stove just wouldn't light. This was a massive problem, without warm food it wasn't possible to backpack for two straight days. Thankfully we were still in the campgrounds, so we headed out of the park and bought a new stove and more importantly a lighter. On the way there we had some warm bagels, banana bread, and coffee at a German bakery.

We hiked all morning in a faint but consistent drizzle, starting from the Glacier Gorge trailhead, past Alberta falls, on the Boulder Brook trail to the **Boulder Brook campsite**, munching on cliff bars. While not strenuous in itself, the constant threat of an imminent thunderstorm (which thankfully never came) made the hike unnecessarily exhausting. Your day is very unusual when you're backpacking. You wake up early, pack your bags almost mechanically, rush through a breakfast, hike all morning and then you are done, free to while away the rest of the day as and how you like. We decided to hike up a nearby trail just for the sake of it.

As we were winding up lazily and comfortably, taking our time cooking dinner, enjoying the warm instant meals, leisurely chatting away about life and stuff, the sky to the west suddenly turned dark. I had heard that weather in the mountains is very unpredictable and whimsical and changes at a moment’s notice, but it hadn’t really sunk in until I actually see it happen. It was indeed not a hyperbole but something that was happening all around us.

It wasn’t like we did not have rain gear, it’s just the abruptness of it all left me in a panic mode. We got our bearings together, packed all the food and the cooking equipment in the bear canisters and reconvened inside our sleeping tents. While inside the tent we could hear the storm getting closer and closer, the winds getting stronger, until finally when it hit us it felt like the tent would get blown away with us in it. All the while I was nicely tucked in my sleeping bag reading my kindle.