One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Four steps.
Rainbow Dash made the slow climb up the snowy mountain ridge after the far more appealing option of flight was taken away from her. Snow clung to her in matted clumps, making the task of walking even more difficult. Her hooves also felt like nothing more than big blocks of ice thanks to how numb the cold had made them. If Rainbow Dash knew this was going to happen she would’ve gotten some boots and a heavy coat at some point. Instead, each step was a painful labor and she hadn’t even been walking for more than two minutes. This sort of pace was agonizingly slow for her and she had barely covered any actual distance at all since she was still just going up the sloped ridge.
Once she made it to the top though she’d at least be able to look out and see what lied ahead. Rainbow Dash was expecting a series of valleys and mountains covered in snow that were going to be an absolute pain to walk through but maybe she’d at least see a decent path south. The wind and snowfall had let up slightly in that it wasn’t blinding her anymore but the freezing cold temperature of the world around her had gotten worse if anything. Directly being in contact with so much snow was a painful thing.
Her wings were stuck uselessly at her sides and her mane had become full of icicles and covered in a sheen of frost that made her hair feel brittle atop her head. Cold, cold, cold, from every direction pressing down on every part of her body. Rainbow Dash thought that even a fire at this point might not overcome the sheer cold out here. Shaking her body to try and free herself of the snow or at least shake what had fallen on her back off was only a temporary fix. A few seconds later the light amount of snow falling would still be enough to keep her back powdery white.
“Think warm thoughts,” Dash said aloud to remind herself she was still alive and moving.
“Princess Celestia is moving the sun overhead right now… i-it’s the middle of the day and it’s n-nice and warm out,” Rainbow Dash muttered.
It wouldn’t the first time she had tried to use mind over matter on this trip, Twilight would be happy to know. If only the weather was just a little less crazy and independent she could probably manipulate it a little bit to make things easier for herself but the way it was she’d probably need a whole weather team to do that. Those scientist guys she had met way back would be a huge help now, the flightsuit and weather dampening spells they had invented were perfect for a situation like this.
Instead, Rainbow had to trudge through the snow with her hooves feeling twice—thrice—as heavy as normal. The snow all around her gave her nothing but a white wasteland to look at thanks to the slope obscuring her vision of everything ahead. At least when she got to the top of it she’d be able to see the mountains the ridge directly ran across, and whatever lied down the other side.
Walking up a steep slope like this was tough though and Rainbow was partially worried that every time her hoof made snowfall she was accidentally going to dislodge a huge drift and go plunging away with it. Every step saw her legs go down past the halfway point and dig out huge chunks of snow, showing her that there was a lot of loose snow beneath her hooves. These top layers were probably the result of freshly fallen snow that had only come down in the past few days before blowing away. A foot or two down she’d find much firmer snow all packed together, along with ice and the rock that actually made up this mountain she was walking on.
“Twilight is never going to let me hear the end of how I didn’t know barely anything about snowy mountains when I get home. She’s going to lecture me so much on how unprepared and reckless I was… ugh, I hate getting lectured by her.”
The one positive she could hold onto at the moment was she wasn’t hungry or thirsty yet. Because if the Reindeer’s journal was accurate, she wasn’t going to find food anytime soon. But her last meal she had back in Nogt was still in her stomach and she was going to enjoy all the nourishment it could provide.
Rainbow Dash was now about fifty feet from the top of the ridge but the slope got steeper and steeper the closer to the top she got until it was nearly vertical. It was impossible for her to tell how narrow it was up there or if she could really stand on it and take a look at everything on the other side… or if she would accidentally take a tumble down the other side as soon as she crested it. Her hooves were having trouble getting any purchase in the snow either, Rainbow Dash grunted in frustration as she kept pulling away clumps of snow and backsliding along with them each time, not making any progress.
“C-Come on!” She dug away at some of the loose snow on top to find a better purchase below it. Not like her hooves could get any number anyways.
Finding some snow that didn’t feel like she was trying to swim through it, she managed to make a slow and steady progress back up the slope. Quite a few snowball-sized pieces were still falling loose all around her but Rainbow at least hadn't started a chain-reaction and brought the whole ridge down. So she’d call that a plus. Still half-frozen with snow and icicles clinging all over her body, Rainbow Dash climbed the final lengths of the slope right up until her hoof crested the top of the ridge.
“Y-Yes!” She called out a little too loudly, forgetting about the possibility of avalanches in her moment of triumph. There didn’t seem to be a danger of that at the moment though and Rainbow Dash heaved the rest of her body up. “Whoa!” Rainbow said as she teetered on top of the ridge, it was way too narrow for her to stand on she threw half her body over and straddled it for a second to take a breather.
Now she could see what was coming up next for her.
Dozens of snowy mountains and valleys spread in front of her until the whiteness all blurred together in the distance, creating a blank and impenetrable canvas. A glacier or two was along the way but for the most part it looked like Rainbow would be walking up and down drifts of snow and along the treacherous sides of mountains. Without her wings as a safety net. Speaking of that, she spied a path along the mountain that this ridge connected to she could take or she could go down the other side of this ridge and keep walking through the snow. She honestly doubted either was better than the other.
The decision was made for her anyways when the snow she was resting on started to crumble away and slide downwards.
“Aw crud...” Rainbow Dash said as the portion of the ridge she was on fell away completely and took her down the other side in a messy roll with enough snow to bury her twice over.
Like a barrel of apples she tumbled down only to finally stop at the bottom of the ridge once the momentum had died off, leaving her at a level plain of snow. Rainbow Dash fought her way out of the snow that she ended up buried under, shivering and shaking with her whole body a numb dark blue. That was not what she had in mind. She pulled her lower body out of the pile and shook herself off as best she could but it hardly did anything to help.
Rainbow Dash took a deep, shuddering, breath and continued her walk across the snow. The cold around her not letting up for a second.