The leader

[armand]

CC appreciated.

[wolfnowl]

nice try?

[popnfresh]

Very minimalist, in the spirit of Michael Kenna. The greyscale range is too limited, though. For this kind of photo you need a full tonal range from black to white, while preserving detail in both the grasses and the snow. It's a very tough technical challenge and few people can pull it off. Look up some of Micheal Kenna's Japanese landscapes and you'll see what I mean.

[armand]

Very minimalist, in the spirit of Michael Kenna. The greyscale range is too limited, though. For this kind of photo you need a full tonal range from black to white, while preserving detail in both the grasses and the snow. It's a very tough technical challenge and few people can pull it off. Look up some of Micheal Kenna's Japanese landscapes and you'll see what I mean.

Those landscapes are amazing. Thanks for the tip. Now I do recall that I saw something similar (probably same guy) few years ago.

Regarding the tonal range I really struggled between making the snow look "white" and preserving more detail. I am not experienced in Lightroom at all. I have a couple of books, but so far I am still at the organization part on the first    I did try a little more though and here is another version with more detail and better tonal range.

[jani]

I think the original works better than the retry. The problem with the second image is that you end up with too much grey, and snow usually does not look like that.

I suppose that what you want is to both convey the essence of white snow while preserving the structure - the shades of light grey.

Here is a quick and dirty hack to show what I mean:

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I agree pretty much with janis version.
The image concept however I like as well as the title.