I think it pretty much boils down to your experience and comfort zone, and knowing when to say no. The older I get, the more of a pu**y I become. Which is fine. There are days when there is so much snow that saying in makes sense for us. My wife is an excellent powder skier, but before the latest generation of wide skis, there were days when we were "on the road" and we had more snow that she wanted to ski on her Snow Rangers. Maybe an honest 36" with deeper drifts. Just not fun for her. 24" and less drifting....Bring it on. She's been skiing since she was 18 months old, and fun is good.
It may be that we piled on a lot of miles before the days of skiing on top of everything. Dunno.
In retrospect, I have only had a few scary days in really deep snow. One was digging a friend out of a tree well. Two of us were behind him, saw it happen, knew what to do, and we dug him out. Quickly and calmly. He luckily had an air pocket, and he remained calm. If he were skiing alone, he would have died. No question.
The second had nothing to do with skiing danger. I was at Alta with a bunch of friends. We were talking the last afternoon flight back East, so the plan was to ski until about 1PM, then hop in the van. It had snowed a lot that night, and kept snowing that AM...pretty heavily. Enough snow that I was surprised that we were not locked in. They were bombing like crazy in the early AM. I would guess that there was about four feet in spots. And yes, this was skinny ski days. My powder skis were a pair of 210cm Fischer GS skis.
We were going to do a few last laps on the Wildcat chair, before time was up. On the first, I "threw a shoe", and lost a ski. The problem was that I kept skiing on one until I stopped, and with the visibility, I had no real idea where it was. Stupid. I was the last in the group, and they just kept ripping. NO idea. They circled back, and were glad to see me "OK", but feverishly digging with my other ski to try to find the lost one. Pretty soon we had all six of us looking. I was absolutely soaked, breathing hard, and my pulse was racing. After a solid hour of this, time had come to either leave the ski and fly home or not. So, I made my way down in thigh deep powder on one ski. That was a treat. Took a shower, flew home. Contacted Alta, and gave them some details in case somebody found the ski. In fact about there weeks later, somebody called. Found!
I was about 30, and in great shape when that took place. I think about being 30 years older, and that could be a life threatening move. I live at sea level. If it happened again, I'd spend 10 minutes and say, "It's only a ski." I bet that in close to a thousand powder days over the years, I may have lost a ski 5 times. One other was also at Alta {must be cursed}, and it took about five minutes to find it. Pretty sure that I had not cleaned my boot sole when we stopped at Watson for coffee the morning of the big loss. Or so I'm guessing. Solly all metal trace binders set around 14, as I recall. Of course my wife did nicely suggest powder leashes. Why? Haha.
I bet if it had been 18" or less of new snow, the tail would have been sticking out, etc. No issues, would have walked to it and clicked in. The skiing had been great, BTW.
The third was at Telluride. It was snowing like mad, and had been for two days. They were digging out lifts. This was in 1980. So I was ripping down one of the trails on the front face, with a group of guys. It was not totally bottomless, but close. Beautiful. Visibility, not so much. All of a sudden I felt nothing underneath me. Next thing I knew, I hit hard. Both knees into my chest. Wind knocked out of me, goggles broken. Now, I am sure, concussed. And lying on about 3" of snow. WTF? Turns out that they had been keeping one cat track on the mountain cleared every couple of hours in case they had an emergency. No warning. About a 10 foot drop onto the cat track. I later heard that "normally" they had a rope up to warn of that drop. Evidently the biggest one around. Boom! Bottomless steep to flat rock hard. Great luck. I was lucky not to break something. Lesson is that I had been there for 3-4 days, was skiing with friends who worked there, but I did not "really" know the place. I was a bit bold. Of course they didn't warn me! Let's say that Telluride was a bit different then. I should have skipped the powder and bought some real estate, which they could not give away at the time!
So I'm a big believer in knowing where you are. I was a stupid age 26 that day in Telluride. Have lost a few friends over the years, not being fully aware of where they were skiing. As the snow piles up, and visibility goes down, it's really important, IMO.
When I was a kid, we lived in Europe. On one of our first trips to Chamonix, we skied the Valle Blanche, one of the easier routes, as I was about 10. That night at dinner, my dad was pretty quiet, my mother was really quiet, other than tell my much older brother to shut up. He and Dad, BTW, had skied the tough route a couple of times that week. Turns out that three people had been lost in a crevasse that very day. Gone. That led to a long conversation about safety, knowledge, experience, guides, risk management, respecting the mountains, etc. A lot sunk in even at that age....at least the headlines. We got into the habit of a guide, referred by people we knew, whenever offpiste in Europe.
I've heard a lot about Japan, but we have only been there once, decades ago. A few years ago, we had the opportunity to go with a group, and had to pass. Killed me! Four couples, all really good skiers. When they got back, I was talking to one. This guy was a CMH guide for about five years, back in the day. He said that they had two days when there was "just too much snow." How much? Hard to tell, but probably five-six feet overnight. Jeez!!! That I have never seen.
I love telling my tall friends that people with short legs get to ski more knee deep powder.
