ngl the snow glare in the Rockies will absolutely kill your dynamic range if you dont have glass. I have shot a ton of winter footage over the years and without filters you are looking at shutter speeds of 1/8000 which makes motion look like a strobe light. To stay under budget, I would grab the Skyreat DJI Mini 4 Pro ND Filter Set 6-Pack which is usually way cheaper than the big name brands but still holds up for casual cinematic shots. That leaves you about sixty-five bucks for a standard DJI Mini 4 Pro Intelligent Flight Battery. Honestly the Plus version is heavy and can be overkill if you are hiking and just doing short pops for b-roll. In my experience, managing your flight time is a skill you should learn early anyway. Get the extra standard battery and the filters, and you are basically set for the trip without breaking that $100 limit. You really need that ND glass to keep the snow from looking like a white blob of digital noise...

TL;DR: Go with the filters. You cant fix blown-out snow highlights later, but you can definitely manage your flight time with a bit of planning. I have been very satisfied with the Freewell DJI Mini 4 Pro Bright Day ND Filter 6-Pack for my alpine trips. Honestly, the glare from the snow is just too much for the sensor without hardware help. While the DJI Intelligent Flight Battery Plus for Mini 4 Pro is a great piece of gear, the standard battery works well enough if you are methodical. I usually have no complaints about the 30-minute limit when I am just grabbing specific scenic shots during a hike. My advice is to grab the filters now. They usually cost around 50 bucks, so you will actually have some cash left over. I would rather have one perfect, well-exposed shot than three hours of overexposed footage that looks like a white blob.

• Get the Freewell DJI Mini 4 Pro ND/PL Hybrid Filters 6-Pack specifically for that snow glare.
• Use the leftover 50 dollars toward your next battery later.

thought about this for a sec... just be careful if you go with the bigger battery because it bumps the weight over the 249g limit. that might matter if youre picky about regs. cold mountain air kills batteries way faster too. check out the mavicpilots forum for some good cold weather threads. are you shooting mostly midday or golden hour? also do you have a car charger to top off between hikes?

omg i am literally in the exact same boat right now and it is driving me crazy! i have been staring at my shopping cart for like three hours trying to decide between extra air time or not having my footage look like a white blob... the struggle is so real!!

• i have been diving deep into the dji technical docs and various flight safety manuals but they all just say the same generic stuff about cold weather and it is not helping at all.
• checking things like uav forecast for mountain wind patterns has only made me more nervous about the battery life honestly since i am obsessed with reliability.
• i have even been looking through old mavicpilots threads and airdata uav flight logs from years ago trying to find a similar snowy scenario but still nothing definitive! seriously i have been dealing with this for like a week now and still cant find a solid answer... choosing between safety and shot quality is just the worst position to be in right before a big trip!!