somewhere cold and caked in snow

As the bus drove up to the mountains, you could see the big fat grey clouds that we were going to be skiing in, and about an hour after we started skiing, they began to dump. I hope this photo gives you an idea of the reduced visibility:
Thankfully, the tour operator said anyone who wasn't familiar with the mountain could ski with him. If I hadn't been skiing with him, I'm pretty sure I would have skied off the back of the mountain at some point. Even though the snowstorm made skiing a bit difficult, and caused a lot of the lifts to be closed, it was great to be there.
It snowed so much that the bus had to put chains on to get back down the mountain: