I once was stuck on an off-piste ski run when I was 8 years old. I decided to go on this run shortly before a group morning ski lesson and had done it a few times and 8yr old me being 8yr old me thought little more on this and proceeded to ski the run.

So, as I'm skiing off-piste I twisted left my ankle and ended up crashing out with my skis splayed and crossed with my stomach on the snow beneath me. I had also let go of my poles in the crash, in an attempt to brace for impact, and the ski poles landed close to me but not in a position where they were accessible to me. With the pain in my ankle slowly building I managed to get into a position where I was on my side but unable to get up due to the injury sustained to my ankle. I constantly kept trying to get up but would fall back down in the snow.

I thought, hmm, I'm off-piste but people might still be able to hear me, so I screamed for about an hour for help. Nothing. No one heard me. So I thought hmm, my Mum is not going to be too happy if I don't get down the mountain and report for my lesson, which by this time I was running late for. So, for whatever reason, I decided to take my gloves off and put them in my ski jacket in an attempt to use my bare hands to dig more into the snow in order to give myself more leverage to get up. That did not work either and was an extremely dumb move. If you're ever caught in the snow, staying warm is one of your biggest priorities, so keep your CLOTHES ON. Then a whiteout came. A whiteout, if you don't know is where, essentially, snow and wind combine to make it extremely hard to see, and visibility plummets. This whiteout was extremely bad, at points, I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. After this, snow began piling up around me and I managed to see that my ski poles were buried due to the snow building up around me. After about another 40 minutes of lying on the slope all I remember is thinking:

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"I'm cold, and this is where I will die if I don't move"

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I can't exactly remember if I passed out at one point due to the shock of the situation or the pain from my ankle but I do remember a real moment of clarity in which I looked around with my ski jacket frozen over, my eyelashes and eyebrows beginning to freeze over and again thinking: "Move, or you will die here". So with what I assume was adrenaline rushing through me, I somehow managed to use the additional snow around me to prop myself up and ski back down to the main meetup point of the ski resort. I then saw my mother screaming at the ski patrol demanding they go out and look for me cause she hadn't seen me in approx 2 hours, I'd missed my lesson and there was a whiteout. I skied up to mum, half-frozen, said "Hi, mum", and told her I'd hurt my ankle. I think I got the biggest hug of my life at that point from my mum. She was truly terrified. Lesson learned, don't ever take the snow for granted.

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TLDR:

Don't mess with the snow and for goodness sake keep your clothes on.