Can somebody start a good argument please??

can I start whining about how expensive an unlimited pass is at Snoqualmie for 08/09?

Pete A, you whine away to your heart's content. This as a Freedom Argument and any topic is valid but you have to have a dissenter or it won't be argument but just a RANT, so I'll be your dissenter.
Here goes.

I think ski pass prices in WA are very reasonably priced compared to the rest of the Western US. It's $85 a day at JH, so stop your whining. [b]They are corporations and have capital investors that deserve to make a modest profit for the risk of their investment!![/b]

How was that?


Edit. still having problems with the bold and italicized function; my bad

This as a Freedom Argument and any topic is valid

No it isn't.

Tally THAT score, you whacky scot. (like the tartanish colors?)

I carried avy gear much later than usual this year, to the point that, when I'd forgotten it on Adams and Hood on July 4th, I felt like a moron, despite feeling confident in the snowpack by then.

Well if Alpental had Jackson Hole's (or Baker's or so many other ski resorts) open boundary policy for getting to the backcountry anytime the lifts are spinning, then I wouldn't whine about Alpy being too expensive!    

Avy gear.... I like to carry my shovel, because, well, frankly a shovel is useful for more than just avy rescue. The beacon gets a little silly when you've got twelve inches of very stable augustpack.

Here's an argument -- three teens rescued from Three Fingers because they didn't bring overnight gear. They expected to spend the night in a lookout tower, but found the ladder was gone.

Then a couple gets stranded on the Ptarmigan Traverse -- I haven't been able to dig up any details on that one yet, except they've lost most of their gear somehow and can't get back.

What's with people today? And who's paying for all these rescues? Argue away.

Thanks Scotsman. In the past I've had some very bad experiences when I allowed other people to keep negatives. As far as sunblock, what good does it do anyway? I'm perfectly happy with a vicious sunburn, I can be a man about it after all, and wince in secret, with a smile on my face.

RE: Whining. The following are just a few suggestions about proper context for whining...feel free to take these suggestions with a grain of salt or two.

Maybe someone should start a sunburn club so that there can at least be something substantial to whine about. After spending the day roasting in the sun, members of the sunburn club can go drink beer and cry about how much their skin hurts. Or maybe someone should start a sunburn/ropeburn club.

In the bylaws of the club:

"[ Club members are required to rappel shirtless and without sunscreen until their palms are bloody and their skin is the color of cooked lobster. Rappelling shall be conducted without benefit of any backup because rappel backup systems lead to sloppy rappel technique. ]"

To address LordHedgie's question: who pays for all these rescues? The taxpayers of course...but I would like to examine the fundamentals first...what leads to these rescues in the first place. I think one can connect the presence of the ten essentials directly to most of these rescues. The presence of the ten essentials changes human behavior ( much like an AvaLung or transceiver ) and therefore leads to more rescues because people who carry sunscreen are for some reason convinced of their own immortality in the mountains. I think the other essentials ( GPS, Ice Axe, Ethel Merman LP) further contribute to the problem because people get hurt when they attempt disco dancing on steep, exposed slopes while listening to the thumping beats and delicate crooning of most Ethel Merman tunes. Since people need both hands to disco dance properly, their ice axe is not at the ready. Clearly this leads to the problems. Maybe we should institute a tax on Ethel Merman LPs and people who fail to keep their axe on a short leash. Actually, I think it would be better to tax sunscreen to pay for these rescues because it is clearly the sunscreen clad crybabies who can't even stand a single night out without food or water, thus leading to expensive organized rescues.

This post is sort of random but that happens from time-to-time.