Material Distribution Via Heightmaps

I have tried following several tutorials regarding making landscape materials that distribute a material based on an image file. A few tutorials came close as I could distribute colors created by vectors. I would actually prefer to use a material for example an eroded mountain where snow is distributed based on a .png file for example. I have created hte heightmap files and they seem correct but can’t get a material to this and none of the many tutorials I found got it or they would skip over something and show the result of some action that was not explained.