There are all those stories of folks on the high plains who got lost between the house and the barn during a blizzard. Bodies were not retrieved until the spring thaw.....
When my dad was a boy growing up on a farm in South Dakota they had a rope line running from the house to the barn in the winter. You just held/followed the rope. It was pretty common to know someone that died or lost a family member that got lost trying to reach an out-building.