Backcountry skiing is growing in popularity, but experts warn it’s more dangerous than you think

Ski resorts are getting really crowded and they're incredibly expensive. A day skiing at just Mammoth Mountain here in California can easily cost 219 bucks this season for the lift ticket. And despite that expense, you can get incredible long lines just to get on the lifts. It just feels kind of like a day at Disneyland, not a day in the great outdoors. And what that's doing, it's driving more and more people to start to explore the backcountry. You look across the ridge and you see empty, beautiful fields of what appears to be gorgeous snow. And if you're a confident skier and you're a good skier, you think, well, why am I here and not over there? The downside is they can be incredibly dangerous. And that's because ski areas, they're some of the most controlled and protected slopes in the world. Whenever there's a big snowfall, they send teams of patrollers out in the morning to look for unstable snow, for big stashes of snow that might slide. And they deliberately trigger avalanches. And the effect is that, you know, you can idle along in a big resort and not have to worry about what might come crashing down on top of you. That is not the case in the backcountry. Of course, there are no patrollers. There's nobody doing anything. So it's just nature doing its own thing. And even if you were in an avalanche and you managed to get a phone call out, it would take anybody hours upon hours to get to you. And the other really tricky thing is that sometimes the most dangerous sign of an avalanche isn't even apparent on the surface. Think of snow as like a layered cake. And it's these storms, they fall on top of each other. And if like a warm, wet storm comes in, that's like the frosting. And then if a colder, dry storm comes in, that's like crumbly cake. And if you end up with like a firm layer on top of a weak layer, that's what causes like those huge avalanches you'll see. You know, if you go on YouTube or in the movies, like a giant, giant slab just sliding down the hill and you get the crack and then there's nowhere to go. If that happens, there's no chance you're going to outrun it. You know, what happens is you get sucked into it. You might hit a rock, you might hit a tree. And if you're lucky enough not to have either of those things happen, there's a really good chance you're going to be buried. And avalanche snow tends to settle very quickly and harden into something, basically the consistency of concrete. And then the clock starts ticking because you don't have any air down there or you have very little air down there. And it's up to your friends or whoever you're with to try to find you and free you before you suffocate. It can be done, but the odds are not good. In fact, in the last decade, 234 people have died in avalanches in the United States. A few of those were hikers and snowmobilers, but almost all the rest were skiers. I went out backcountry skiing for the first time last week with a guy who's been guiding in the mountains around Bishop, California for three decades. And he was telling me, look, if you make this sport a part of your life for any length of time, you are going to know people who die. It's very real and it's very, very serious. So without some training, without some education, without some input on what you should be looking for, do not. Just go try it on your own.