Is snow that good?
I've never traveling to outside country, so i don't know
From one hot-climate native (Texas, USA) to another hot-climate native...
Sorry about the length, but this is something that requires a LOT of nuance to properly convey
everything - not so much the experience of snow itself, but instead of what you have to deal with in the process of experiencing snow. (I know, sounds complicated, right? Like I said, LOTS of NUANCE.)
My stepfather was primarily of Scandinavian stock - his great-grandmother was a first-generation Scandinavian-American, being born in America shortly after her parents migrated. And he was raised in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. This is a place that can get very cold during the winter, but it also has a few pockets of geothermal activity - the perfect home for people coming from Scandinavia, and thus they colonized the fuck out of that region. (Literally. They came in masses, and fucked like rabbits because it was so much like home to them.)
For two years, he and the rest of my family lived in a place called Rochester, New York. It's a town on the northern border of the state, nearby the USA-Canada border, and right on the southern shore of Lake Ontario - one of the five Great Lakes of the USA.
These lakes are big enough that they act as thermal batteries, and not in a nice way. Because of how long cold temperatures in that region persist, they are constantly sucking down heat and causing what is locally known as "Lake Effect Weather".
In the summer time, they remove heat from the air, creating cold air currents, and causing the water vapor present in the air to become frigid rain storms.
But in the winter time? Well, because the lakes absorbed all that heat during the summer, the surface doesn't always freeze over like it does on smaller lakes.
What does this mean? Well, the air that comes down from Canada is super-dry from having all the water frozen into ice and snow. And with the surface of the lake still being above-freezing temperature? Those air currents suck up the surface water like a sponge. And then this crystalizes into ice crystals in the freezing air, and thus becoming snow storms.
This is no fun at all because the snow storms caused by the Lake Effect can dump METERS of snow in some places.
Places like Rochester.
To wit: the township where my family was actually living just outside of Rochester, had an old, retired snow plow that was proudly displayed at the town limits.
The damn thing was
twice as big as the truck that pushed it. And it was not anything like a pickup truck or a heavy duty truck. The trucks that push these plows are heavy dump trucks used in construction sites.
That's the kind of snow we're talking about.
And you know what? My stepdad, who was used to cold, snowy weather, told me in no uncertain terms: the "novelty" of snow had worn off from him. He no longer had any appreciation for snow at all.
That said?
How "good" snow is to you all depends on how well you can tolerate being cold over extended periods of time. It can feel great being outside for short periods of time - like maybe an hour and a bit.
But here we get into the strengths and weaknesses of the human species as a whole (and part of why some people like to think we'd be like space orcs if we ever got off of this planet).
Homo Sapiens (humans) are absolutely NOT thermally efficient. We evolved mainly on arid grasslands and plains. We tend to feel very comfy in a hot and dry environment because humans are typically geared to thermoregulate in those conditions. And we primarily do so by sweating. In a dry environment, we don't really notice because it evaporates pretty quickly. Aside from the limitation that we are required to have regular access to a water source, we actually have the most efficient and effective thermoregulation system in the entire Animal Kingdom.
Now, here's where things get weird.
It's pretty well known that some ethnic groups tend to have metabolic rates (the rate at which we convert chemical energy - the human body's chemically driven "heat engine") that are wildly different from other ethnic groups. If you're the type of person who was perpetually scrawny as a child, or even as an adult, no matter how much you eat? You probably radiate heat like there's no tomorrow.
(And yes, I was such a person. My metabolic rate was so freakishly high that I was forever underweight, even as an adult. I was like that until I joined the US Navy, and was not just allowed to eat as much as I could, but even encouraged to do so. If there was any dieting, it was only in the sense of "get as many calories as you can - you're gonna need every last one!" In recruit training, there were a lot of people who didn't really gain or lose weight because, even with being encouraged to stuff their faces, they were burning fat and putting on muscle. But me? I gained over 10kg (23lbs), and all of it was muscle - I hardly had any fat to lose as it was.)
So what happens when you transplant such a person to a spot north of the 45th parallel - the halfway-point between the equator and the pole? (Or south of it if in the southern hemisphere.)
Well sure, they're gonna feel god-awfully cold. We can tank heat extremes of 40.5° C (105° F) easily, especially if the relative humidity is below 60% - the drier the air, the more easily sweat evaporates.
So in such a cold environment, we're gonna want to put on layer upon layer of clothes until we feel comfortable.
But here's the thing: if you put on that much clothing, you're gonna be sweating as much as you normally would at that comfort-zone-temperature. And if you're used to extreme heat? Well, rather than evaporating, all that sweat is gonna get trapped in your clothing.
Which means you'll be wearing sweat-soaked clothing in about an hour, if not minutes.
This is bad because wet clothes don't keep you warm at all. Instead of being heat insulators, they become heat conductors. And just like that, you will go from feeling nice and toasty to freezing your genitals off.
How do you avoid this?
Well, the solution is one of those things: it's perfectly livable - preferable even - but it is a miserable experience to endure.
You wear as little as possible. Yes, that's right. Just enough that you're not in danger of suffering any cold-injuries. In fact, you should probably wear a
just little bit less than the people who are used to the cold. The reason for this is simple: you want to be sweating as little as possible so you don't wind up soaking your insulating layers with your sweat.
(Granted, this changes when you're dealing with
extreme cold - but that's temperatures like -30° C, at which point you're usually at or near the Arctic or Antarctic Circles.)
The best way to mitigate the discomfort is to insulate where the locals usually don't. Make regular use of ski gloves and balaclavas (ski masks and other head-wrappings) while reducing the layers around your torso and legs.
What about Gore-Tex?
Unfortunately, Gore-Tex is not a magic bullet. It's effectiveness against cold is only so-so because it's a byproduct of what it actually does. And what it actually does is that it lets water vapor (evaporated sweat) exit the clothing while keeping liquid water out. Which sounds magical, right? It seems perfect for cold weather.
But, despite being touted for use in things like parkas and other extreme cold gear, it's actually meant for
wet weather. If you put on enough clothing to feel "comfortable" and add a Gore-Tex shell, you still have the problem of soaking your under-layers with sweat.
Trust me, I know because while I was in the US Navy, part of my uniform was a Gore-Tex jacket with a removeable fleece lining. And more often than not? I didn't use the fleece lining because it would wind up getting soaked with my sweat, and thus ruin its insulating properties. (It'd also wind up smelling horrible.) The lining did have openings in the underarm areas that could be opened and closed with a zipper. These openings would allow evaporated sweat out, but this wasn't always effective. Military bearing, for the most part, demands that your arms be kept close to your sides, which is counterproductive to the purpose of these openings.
Where Gore-Tex really helps is in dealing with snow melting on your clothing from your heat. The melt-water will be kept out while your evaporated sweat is allowed to leave. You will still need to wear as few insulating layers as possible.
The sensation of cold will be something you just have to get used to. But if you do? The locals are gonna think you're some kind of super-human, because you'll be going around wearing much less clothing than they are, and chugging away for hours longer outdoors than even they can manage.
It happened with my mom, who is a native to Texas with Native American ancestry. When she toughed out the cold weather of Rochester, she utterly astonished the locals there. She was putting out so much heat that she couldn't stand to wear all the layers she wanted - it was actually dangerous for her to do so because it was possible for her to get heat stroke from doing that! She didn't like the sensation of the cold, but she made the locals seem like they were the ones weak to the cold instead.
Of course, if my stepdad got sick and tired of snow after living in Rochester, you can bet my mom was no fan of it, either!
Long story short, unless you can handle the sensation of feeling cold for long periods of time, you'll want to keep the time you spend in the snow to as little as possible. At least, that is if you want to continue being able to enjoy excursions like that in the future.
