Bulldozers broke open roads to push into the isolated Himalayas, choppers roared into blue skies and trucks and mules shifted supplies to more than three million people made homeless by the disaster 10 days ago.
But the aid effort was marred by a row between Pakistan and rival India, which turned down a request by Islamabad for helicopters without crews for relief operations.
"It has started snowing in the hills, people are suffering from fever and they are likely to die - we need tents and blankets immediately," said Yussuf, 36, a farmer from Haryal village who trekked down to Ghari Dupatta after his son died in the quake.
This town was made accessible for the first time since the earthquake after army bulldozers reopened a key road from Muzaffarabad into the devastated Jhelum Valley.
The army also managed to cut through the rocks and mud to clear the road from the razed north-western town of Balakot to the mountain town of Sanghar, a crucial outpost for far-flung villages.
But even with around 100 helicopter sorties on Tuesday, the head of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), James Morris, said that time was running out.
"The aid agencies have managed to give some help to hundreds of thousands of people, but there are an estimated half a million more people out there in desperate need, who no one has managed to reach," Morris said in a statement.
"People don't just need food. First of all they need shelter, blankets and medical assistance - then food and clean water," Morris said.
He called the operation one of the toughest the international aid community has ever faced. The WFP's own trucks arrived only on Monday in Balakot.
There was also a dire prediction from the United Nations that not enough winter tents existed to shelter survivors from the quake, which the government says killed more than 41,000 people in Pakistan alone.
"It is fair to say the indication is that there are not enough tents in the world available to support the requirements," Andrew MacLeod, chief operations officer in the UN emergency response centre in Islamabad, told AFP.
UN Spokeswoman Amanda Pitt said the supply of tents had been exhausted in Pakistan, which she said was the world's biggest producer of winter tents.
"The whole thing here is a nightmare. I know it sounds dramatic to say this but it really is a case of nature overwhelming man," Pitt said. Pakistan also appealed for bigger tents to use as makeshift schools in the coming months.