Mark Hansen wrote:

I guess everyone will have their own personal safety margins, but if
I was unable to come up with a way to safely make the flight, I would
not fly. Perhaps this is simply due to my lack of experience.

I'm not sure what that means. Every flight is an exercise in risk
assesment. Since there are no guarantees that you will ever come up
with a way to "safely make a flight", you'd have to stay on the ground.

The trick is to slant the odds in your favor as much as possible.
Individuals vary in their risk tolerance, so that is a personal
decision. Some people will not fly over any terrain that would not
permit an emergency landing at any time. That's fine for them, but
would seriously limit the utility of an aircraft for most pilots, if
adhered to religiously. In real life, we make trade-offs. A certain
amount of risk, for a certain amount of reward. Where those two
balance are an exercise for the individual.

I rountinely fly my single engine plane in the bottoms of deep
canyons in very mountainous terrain. I know that there are a lot of
places where an engine failure will have a good chance of killing me.
I do everything I can to make sure that I've minimized the risk as much
as possible, but the bottom line is that I'm trading a little safety in
order to enjoy the unique pleasure of flying the backcountry. Lest
you think I'm some kind of daredevil, there are several hundreds of
other pilots that have made similar choices. I'll be the first one to
say that, although I enjoy it immensly, it's not for everybody.

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)