Lucky kid.
When I was a kid, I fell into one of those head first, and was completely upside down with my skis still on holding me from sinking deeper. I was the last person off the slope that day, so no one saw or helped me. It took me an hour to dig myself out, and I almost died. I totally get the screams of terror, it's pretty scary to be buried alive.

These are so dangerous and mostly ignored by a majority of skiers.

As a teenager, I went skiing with my school class. A friend of mine went out of bounds because he was a typical adrenalin moron, and fell 20 feet down one of those head first. Broke both wrists. If ski patrol hadn't seen him and hadn't been following him to give him shit/kick him off the mountain, that he would have died was almost assured. It was snowing at the time and got really heavy that night. He wouldn't have been found until Spring because he was too far down for anyone to hear him from further than about 20 feet away, and there was no way he was climbing out without wrists.

Am I missing something here? Ending up in a tree well while skiing in a copse area is quite common. Maybe not quite as deep as this kid got into, but its hardly an act of heroism here...

I think you're missing the part where anybody called him a hero. Father rescued son from a tree well, end of story. Saved his life? Who knows.

Solid dad. Calm, and helpful.

"Go ahead and swear."

Damn straight.