PARK CITY, Utah -- The solo skier or snowboarder cutting virgin tracks through the deep powder on a steep mountain slope has become a signature and symbol of the Western tourism industry -- heady with its mixture of freedom, beauty and rugged individualism.

But it is an image that may be getting people killed, skiers and backcountry experts say, as more and more people -- many without much experience or training -- are encouraged to venture beyond the relative safety of the big resorts to the beckoning beyond. Three snowboarders who left resort boundaries -- two in Idaho, one here in Utah -- have died in avalanches since last Friday. Seven people have died in backcountry avalanches in Utah alone since the season started, more than any year since 1950.

''They built the lifts and they pushed the powder," said Bob Athey, a backcountry veteran who was preparing Tuesday morning, as he does just about every day, to ski by himself into the woods near the Alta Ski Resort. ''But then you have more skiers, which dampens down the powder, and that means the people who do want it have to go out of bounds to get it."

In the past few years, the ski industry has responded to a hunger for untrammeled terrain. Alpine touring, which allows a skier to hike like a cross-country skier, or lock the boot down for traditional downhill skiing, has become one of the fastest growing categories in winter sports, industry officials say. Traditional ski makers like Atomic have expanded into the new market, and boot makers that once only served mountain climbers have retooled as well. The American Alpine Institute, a climbing school and guide service in Bellingham, Wash., estimates that off-road skiing, as it might be called, is growing three to five times faster than the traditional downhill sport.

But there is a deep culture clash at the heart of this new phenomenon. Many people who identify themselves as backcountry skiers -- knowledgeable about the risks, trained in survival skills and never without an electronic homing device to help people find them if they're buried by snow -- look with barely concealed disdain at what they call the ''out-of-bounds" skier, who simply rides the chairlift up, disregards the warning signs and ducks under the rope.

The 27-year-old man who died here on Friday, Shane Maixner, found still on his snowboard under 4 feet of snow near the Canyons Resort, was an out-of-bounder who apparently reached the place of his death through a gate on the resort boundary marked with a prominent skull and crossbones. The gate, which leads onto public land, is unlocked, unguarded and its location is clearly marked on resort maps.

''You can't sugar-coat it or people will never learn," said Patrick Ormond, a mountain guide who lives here in Park City. ''Once you cross that gate, if you're unprepared, you cross the line from ignorance to recklessness."

But other backcountry skiers, dyed deep with the free-will ethic that imbues their sport, say that individual decisions and their consequences are all that matter. Life is a calculated risk, they say, and an out-of-bounds skier, however unprepared, has made a choice. That fact must be respected, they say.

''They got killed doing something they like," said Charlie Sturgis, a ski tour guide who manages an outdoor outfitting store here called White Pine Touring, referring to the recent skier deaths. ''That beats hanging out the front of a windshield."

Other backcountry skiers are simply angry. Access into National Forests or other public land is already tighter than ever, they say, as private property and resort development have encircled mountain areas in the West. Reckless people, they say, give careful people a bad name -- and create an excuse for landowners who might want to close roads or trails.

''Besides putting rescuers in danger, our access could be hurt," said Brent Sherry, a college student in Salt Lake City who skis both the backcountry and the resorts. ''I think that could be a real issue."

Avalanche experts say that the recipe for a snowslide is pretty simple -- different storms deposit different layers on a mountain, some with wetter snow and some with dryer powder, and it's only safe when the layers bond, like a layer cake, usually with a few days of warm sun. Experienced skiers say they only venture out after digging a snow trench to see how well the pack has congealed. And any slope steeper than 30 degrees is double prone to slide, they say. Dutch Draw, where the slide occurred last Friday outside the Canyons Resort, has a slope of 37 to 38 degrees.

Other skiers say it is not about the snow or the slope, but about decision making. Some people have a hard time backing away, or backing down, even if they are able to read the dangers. It is a problem that men, in particular, are apparently prone to. Of the 629 people killed in the United States by avalanches since 1950 whose sex was determined, only about one in 10 were women, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center in Boulder.

''Ninety-nine percent of the problem is testosterone poisoning," said Larry Guild, a skier from Amherst, Mass., who was on vacation in Utah and preparing on Tuesday to depart for Utah's backcountry for the first time. Guild said he was going with a guide and wouldn't have it any other way.

''There's no way I'd go up there by myself," he said, nodding his head to the mountains towering above the road where his group had parked.

Other people said that intuition is what can save you in the wild and there's only one way to get it -- through years of experience. Gender doesn't matter.

''My husband has tried to develop a sixth sense about avalanches, and I usually defer to him," said Julie Cooke, who lives in Alta and was walking Tuesday morning past the backcountry access trailhead near her home. Cooke, who said her husband has been skiing the backcountry for 30 years, said she hasn't felt right going out since the last big wave of storms and that she will probably just wait a bit longer still, until she and her husband are sure.

With their grooming equipment and ever-present ski patrols, mountain resorts project an aura of safety that can obscure the risks beyond the borders of a flimsy fence, some skiers say, especially when the snow might look, to the untrained eye, about the same on either side.

Others say that in the blur of warnings and precautions that modern society requires on everything from prescription bottles to paint, it's easier than ever to dismiss an avalanche danger sign as the work of lawyers or fussy government monitors, however dire the language.

''There's a lot of stuff that can get you killed, but when you're in a ski resort, you don't have that expectation," said Sturgis, the tour guide and store manager. ''I bet that 95 percent of the people who go past the gate believe they're skiing at an extension of the resort," he added, referring to the backcountry access point near the summit at Canyons Resort.