Cleve then went on to recount riding in late January or early February 1861 during a raging blizzard that was so bad there had been no Pony Express or stages from the East for four or five days because of waist-deep snow. . . .
Winter was the enemy of the Pony Express. It often doubled the time to move the mochila across the country. William F. Fisher, who immigrated to Utah from the county of Kent in England as a fifteen year-old boy, recalled riding the winter snows between Camp Floyd and Salt Lake City. “I was lost … in a blizzard for 20 hours … Pretty badly exhausted, as I was fighting the storm all the way.”