Damp clothing and sub-zero mountain gales made ordinary travel life-threatening

Evidence

The cold was truly awful. I had caught a chill in the morning from putting on my clothes before they were dry, and the warmth of the smoky den was most agreeable; but we had a fearful ride back in the dusk, a gale nearly blowing us off our horses, drifting snow nearly blinding us, and the mercury below zero. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 248

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The sensory anchor of a gale nearly blowing riders off their horses in blinding snow below zero — a strong basis for a cold-weather travel scene in fiction.
• XREF: connects to: Fear physically paralyzed a confident traveler on the mountainside — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 114