The trees that grew in this elevated region were not tall enough to act as wind breaks; they were hardly more than shrubs a great deal of the time, and merely served to force him into detours around dense hedges.

Sometimes, in a clearing, he found himself staggering to the knees in a compacted drift of snow; sometimes an immense sheet of snow was picked up by the wind and flung in his face like a blanket.
Indeed the cold and the snow were nothing compared with the wind.

It was now reaching the proportions of a westerly storm of the first magnitude.

Off the towering slopes above, it came with the chill of the snow and with flying bits of sand, scooped up from around the base of trees, or with a shower of twigs.

Many a time he had to throw up his arms across his face before he leaned and thrust on into the teeth of the blast.
But he was growing accustomed to seeing through this veil of snow and thick darkness.