Is it acceptable to post a TR?

Which caused more instability - accumulation or depletion?

acarey - I may have misinterpreted the following passage when I assumed it indicated that the words you quoted were in fact Lowell's:As for comity, I guess I'm not sure that telling someone else that they're saying what they're saying purely out of selfishness or elitism really furthers comity in any way. Sorry if you took umbrage at my mind-reading comment, but I really do still wonder how one can tell for sure that the motivation behind the passage you quoted is "self-serving" (whether the passage was penned by Lowell or a magazine editor). Perhaps I'm missing how making a guess like this furthers the discussion.

In any case, there are places I won't report on beyond describing the general region and then giving some conditions info that might be of use to others heading to the general area. I support others who do the same even though this means I may "miss out" on some potentially cool tours. Accusing me of being self-serving and/or elitism isn't going to change my behavior. If you guys have something more substantive than these sorts of accusations, you might manage to enlighten me a bit.

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A little Deborah Tannen ("Please Understand Me" book).  I wrote In my humble opinion  ... I find the statements ... etc. ...with emphasis on the publicizing of more well known areas having  no effect and keeping less known accessible areas lesser known as having greater moral value.  IN OTHER WORDS, I described my opinion/feelings and did not ascribe motivations or thought processes of others.  Psychologists (of which I am one) and conflict resolvers (of which I am one professionally) stress the use of "I" statements vs. ascribing motivations to others.  And my bottom line was: post what you want and don't post what you don't want to post; if you want to keep your private stashes (powder stashes, fish stashes, deer stashes, whatever) private, that is your prerogative; I just found the idea of steering people to other peoples' areas to be not without ramifications for those that use them, as opposed to the idea that substantial additional use would be of no harm to the present users (peasants? naifs?  upstanding citizens?); whatever; I am not predisposed to p*ss*ng contests and that is why I retired from conflict resolution.

Just to clarify, I wrote that letter to Couloir in 1994. The ideas are mine, not the editor's. Sorry that wasn't clearer.

In a previous issue of the magazine, the editor (or maybe letter writers--I don't remember) discussed the issue of publicizing secret spots. I wrote my letter to explain how I resolved the question. Everyone is free to take their own approach.

I'm sure my approach is self-serving to some degree. And if I chose to publish all my trips, I'm sure that would be self-serving too. We ski and write for our own reasons, not for somebody else's reasons. At least that's how it is for me.

Psychologists (of which I am one) and conflict resolvers (of which I am one professionally) stress the use of "I" statements vs. ascribing motivations to others. 

IMHO, this statement is disingenuous and self-serving; I could rewrite and say, I don't mind publicizing spots others know about and steering ever greater numbers to those spots, because that way if I can keep my spots secrete, then at least I will get my fair and disproportionate share of untracked snow and solitude.

I have trouble squaring these two notions. It is of course not the statement itself that is self-serving. Statements, as far as I know, have no "self" and are any rate you elaborated in a way that appears to make it clear that you believed that the person making the statement did so in order to keep their spots secret, so that they would get a disproportionate share of untracked snow and solitude. Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse, but this interpretation is why I reacted as I did. Your does not appear to me to have been a pure "I" statement - you appeared to me to make a pretty clear claim about why the person making the statement did so (though I have not read the book you refer to - I'll have to give it a look - maybe I'm missing some psychologist's nuance...I'm no psychologist; merely someone who has had to facilitate a lot of conflict resolution in a corporate setting). Perhaps I still misunderstand. As long as we're trading book references, I'd point to Difficult Conversations , which, based on extensive conflict resolution experience ranging from marital discord to conflict in the Middle East, stresses that it is important to focus on impact, not intent, if one hopes to increase the odds of a constructive conversation.

As long as we're trading book references, I'd point to Difficult Conversations ... marital discord ...

I find that silence, of the closed mouth sort, is the best way to keep the peace. Peace, silence ... get it?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Publicizing "seldom ventured areas" is in my view the right thing to do. It should relieve the pressure on already popular areas and perhaps also protect the "secret" spots.