Original Message

Luckily no major loss of life to crew or the public. Just a costly ugly training day.

The mission probably started down the rabbit hole with "hey let's go land up at the ski resort and show 'em our stuff". Problem is history repeats itself sometimes.  Large system lack of good training, currency, and recency of doing it, lack of experience. 

Maintain your reference to earth. Maintain you reference to earth. Maintain you reference to earth. Not a typo it's that important.

In Alaska heli skiing, there were days we would land over 30+ landings a day in dry deep snow. Fortunately for me I was handed down some training nuggets that made it happen without incident/accident. 

-Recon, don't just approach and land

-Low in ground effect slow fly over LZ (depart before being engulfed in powder) checking snow conditions

-Toss out a railroad spike with at least 7 feet of high vis surveyor ribbon holding end and letting bolt unspool

-Toss out an open gallon ziplock bag of red cool aide to dye speckle the snow add contrast spots

-Ask newbie to toss their pack so you can land at it and laugh when you can't find it cause the snow is too deep

-Commit to no hover landing as powder catches up from behind with ribbon in chin bubble or floor side window 

-Lost sight of ribbon PRIOR to commit to land ABORT go vertical. (don't attempt any of this at max gross wt)

-Lost sight of ribbon AFTER you commit to land LAND (usually takeoff at this point will get you a crash)

If none of the silliness above works, you might have to dig down deep in your tummy, check your hero pilot ego at the door and say "No I'm not landing here let's go get some coffee and a doughnuts"

I prefer apple fritters and maple bars, yum.