always make sure you have some healthy diggers in your group, i hope i dont ever get burried, but if i do, my group are all some pretty darn in shape farm boys that can dig some holes!!!
on a serious note, as much fun as it is when yu get some fresh deep snow, everyone always wants to go and blast climbs and huge sidehills across the open stuff, but whenever we get more than a foot of fresh we try to stick to the trees, on the less than 20* sopes, might sacrafice a few nice lines, but its safe, so hard to complain. we had a day when i went out with a buddy and we went exlporing up this one logging cut, it had been a few years so the trees are all about 10 feet tall, with about 2-3 feet sticking out of the snow, as we rode up the hill, around 20-30 degrees, we would see the snow just settle beneath us, and you could see little fracture lines jutting across the snow, saw a few small slides, maybe an acre total including runout, needless to say we got to some flatter terrain.
biggest thing i can think of is pay attention to the snow when your riding. sometimes i like to try and trench in as deep as possible on a little turn out in a safe spot, this is like diggin an avy pit in like 5 seconds, easy to look at, just scrape the snow away with your shovel so its not all messed up from your track. i think we all are pretty aware its easy to throw down a 3-4 foot deep turnout pretty quick.
