With the safest route looking to be going around the lake to get to the cave, you start walking right along the shoreline. There was a slight slope which made walking in the snow just a bit harder. On occasion, massive gusts of wind would come whipping across the lake. Thankfully you only shivered in your mind at the thought of that cold wind and not actually since your suit was protecting all but your face.
This would add hours onto your trip it gave you another opportunity to look around. Despite all the ice, there was a simple beauty to this place. As the sun got higher into the sky however the snow started to get rather blinding to your eyes and whatever beauty you had seen quickly vanished.
A bit of the lake seemed to connect to some kind of river perhaps. It was quite wide at the river’s mouth. Despite this river having fully frozen over as well. You decided to take yet another detour and march up perhaps a few dozen steps to a more shallow and thinner part of the river. There you made your crossing.
The lake itself weaved a bit in and out of an unperfected oval. Instead of just following the shoreline you decided to just cut right across a few snow banks till you would hit the shoreline again. That would save some time crossing this way around the lake.
That however ended up being quite the mistake. You went to take one foot forward and fell into a massive tree well. You must have fallen about a dozen feet or so. The tree itself looked to be long gone after failing to survive this rather harsh winter this planet was facing.
Thankfully you did not break any bones. Outside of a rather sore leg and your back hurting you had survived. Getting out of this tree well was however going to be a different story. At least the hole was large enough you were not considering suffocating to death. Granted you did put on your helm just in case the snow around you started to collapse trapping you in place.
The hardest part was trying to work out the safest way to get out of a dozen-foot hole made out of snow. It was not sturdy enough to just try and climb your way out of it at least in a normal sense of doing so.
You did however after some trial and error realize you could push enough snow aside to build yourself a bunch of different ledges. You then could slowly work your way upward going back and forth. It was quite a time-consuming ordeal. It at least worked somewhat.
While almost at the top the snow ledge you had created by pushing snow away from above gave way while you tried to climb up it. You just barely caught the ridge of the ledge you were on and it held your weight long enough for you to climb up it.
You attempted to make a ledge in the other direction that seemed to have more packed snow. That did the trick and soon you were out of that massive hole. Needless to say, you quickly marched back up to the shoreline and never left it again.
There were many other opportunities to take a shortcut you however did not want a repeat of falling down another tree well or even worse. After far too much walking you made it to the mouth of the cave.
Content is written by @Enjar of @Enjargames. AI artwork was created using Playgroundai.
