So this one got some more than just the usual 'adjust contrast, desaturate, increase vibrance' treatment. After seeing what someone made of my fog post with some local contrast etc, I thought I'd experiment a bit. So I first did some work on the overall picture, toning down highlights, increasing ambiance, desaturating and setting the white balance a bit further to the cold side.
But then I added some extra darkening to the shadows of the road to increase its local contrast and lit up the shadowy regions of the mountains. Somehow that makes the image work a lot better now imho.
Also thank you so much for the inspiration with the regional contrast on the other image :) that was the motivation to try out here
No problem, glad you got a kick out of it. Epic scene.