However, it was hard to get a good impression under the endless blankets of white snow pockmarked with small hamlets and towns. With endless tall mountains to the north and the vista to the south seeming to stretch onto an eternity of soft rolling hills and tufts of pinewoods until the view faded into the winter chill, it was hard not to feel a sense of vertigo from traveling so vast while so high on a comparatively steep mountain side.