You'll want a serious stove , one that melts water fast. I recommend sticking with a white gas stove for their blast furnace output. You'll likely have to melt all of your drinking water, so make sure you have a large capacity pot, about twice as much fuel as you would normally take, and lots of patience. A garbage bag dedicated to gathering clean snow for melting is also useful - the snow near camp tends to get kind of dirty. With trips like this, assuming there's no guide, it's best to go with experienced friends.
Old hands provide an immeasurably valuable margin of safety and morale.
Once you stop skiing and encountering new terrain, it takes a certain amount of experience to keep up your spirits. So does conversation and a deck of cards. Needless to say, a bottle of Southern Comfort also works magic on your group's level of feistiness, but don't overdo it. There are few things as unpleasant as watching the contents of your stomach melt the snow between your feet, believe me.