The extended cold-snap we have been exposed to this extraordinarily cold winter seems in no hurry to depart. It lingers here, like a tormenting imp, happy to bring misery to people. Outreach workers have been busy out on the streets at night, looking for the vulnerable homeless sheltering themselves from the icy fingers of a ferocious winter cold that has the potential to silently seep life out of the unsheltered. They bring with them sustenance of food and drink and caring and implore those they succeed in finding to seek protective haven for the night in one of the many shelters which, although crowded will always find place for another body.

The municipality has begun snow removal from city streets due to the safety factor being surmounted by high snowpiles lining streets making the roadway narrower, more difficult for vehicles to pass, and adding to the potential for accidents by impeding sightlines of motorists attempting to exit from driveways into traffic lanes. Where we live, a succession of heavy dump trucks await their turn to be filled with the icy snow lumps dredged from snow-piled curbs by front-loaders, further obstructing traffic, the drivers seemingly impervious to the cold and icy wind blasts, leaving their winter jackets in the cabs of their trucks, despite being lashed by the wind when they exit for brief periods from the protective haven of their trucks.

We haven't ventured out to the ravine for the past several days. Our last trek there left us gasping in the cold, despite being well enough prepared for the environment; my relatively slow progress in the snow on the trails isn't enough to generate sufficient heat from energy expenditure to keep us warm enough,  unlike years previous when we would lope swiftly through the hilly terrain, keeping warm in the process. On the last walk it took quite awhile for the pain of the extreme cold to subside from my fingers on our return. Now we wait for the temperature to moderate at least somewhat before striking out again. Night-time lows are averaging minus-26-degrees and day-time highs about minus-17. With the wind it seems significantly colder.

We've been diligent about putting out peanuts at the front and side of the house. I'm feeling guilty about our lapse of presence in the ravine since it also means that our daily deposits of peanuts have been placed in abeyance. At our house, there are squirrel-paw marks all over the newfallen snow that comes down in small increments daily, and now there are also the prints of birdclaws, since a cardinal has also been availing itself of the peanuts we leave on the rail of the porch.

"In the end the issue was decided by the wind. As the men rested, Wheeler gnawing on a frozen fig, drinking the last of his water, Mallory focused on the mountain soaring above them. He strained his eyes to find a single impediment on the great shoulder that rose from the col to the Northeast Ridge. "We looked up at the flat edge ascending at no very steep angle", he later wrote to Sir Francis Younghusband, the old explorer who'd first sparked the British dream of Everest, "easy rocks and snow all the way to the north-east crest. All we had seen before to build hopes on was confirmed now by the nearer view. No obstacle appeared, none so formidable that a competent party would not easily surmount or go around it."
Transfixed by the mountain, Mallory appeared to Wheeler oblivious to the fierce gusts that still swept over them, despite the modest protection of the wall. Ice formed in his hair and frosted his eyelashes. His eyes seemed as if settled in another realm. In truth, Mallory was tempted to go on, even alone. But as he studied the slope, his hopes sank. "It was impossible", he reported to Younghusband, "to look long without a shudder. From top to bottom this ridge was exposed to the full fury of a gale from the northwest." Violent blasts of wind-whipped snow shot across every slope. "The powdery fresh snow on the great face of Everest was being swept along in unbroken spindrift", he wrote, "and the very ridge where our route lay was marked out to receive its unmitigated fury. We could see the blown snow deflected upwards for a moment where the wind met the ridge, only to rush violently down in a frightful blizzard on the leeward side."
Their lines of communication back to base were also tenuous in the extreme, reaching from this desperate position on the col at 23,000 feet back down across the East Rongbuk Glacier and then over the 22,200-foot Lhakpa La to the camps of the Kharta Valley. The men were too weak for heroics. What good could come from achieving another 2,000 feet, even were it possible? A height record for Hinks and the Everest Committee, imperial glory for Younghusband and the British press; nothing could motivate Mallory less. It was folly to continue. Still he hesitated, and gathered Wheeler and Bullock to his side. By all accounts not a word passed between them. Then Mallory decided to challenge the wind. Leaving the porters, the three British sahibs went on, stumbling more than walking, making their way up the col to the upper ledge "to put the matter to a test". They continued for perhaps two hundred yards and "for a few moments exposed ourselves on the col to the full blast, and then straggled back to shelter. Nothing more was said about pushing our assault any further." No man, Mallory ventured, could have survived such exposure for more than an hour. "No one", Wheeler wrote very simply, "could have existed on that ridge."
Wade Davis -- Into the Silence