On 7 April 2000 I did the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life. I was skiing at Mt. Bachelor, Oregon. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the snow was quite good. At about 3:30 pm (when any sensible person should be thinking about getting back to the car), I was getting off the highest chairlift, feeling high from the sun and the snow and my terrific Vokl race skis, when I suddenly and on an entirely irrational impulse decided to... SKI OUT OF BOUNDS. To make a long story short, I could not get back to civilization and had to spend the night out. My old Army training enabled me to survive the night. I managed to get back to civilization around 9:30 the next morning. Since I got out by myself, I did not have to pay the fee the ski patrol charges for searches. (They had started a search at about 8 am, after my roommates notified them that my bed had not been slept in.) I was a fool to have skied out of bounds - especially since there were big boundary signs warning of the danger of skiing past them, and specifying the hourly rate (I don't remember the amount but it was fiercely high) the ski patrol charges for searches. In my opinion the ski patrol is fully justified in charging. It takes a great deal of time and effort to search through a thickly forested wilderness (such as exists on the lower flanks of Batchlor), and if someone gets lost there not through circumstances beyond his control but through his own foolishness, why shouldn't the ski patrol charge him? The only problem I see is if the person can't afford to pay the fee, which can come to a very large amount if it is a long search. I assume the mountain would arrange some kind of time payment. If anyone is interested in the full story, let me know and I'll email the file to you. Specify whether you want plain text or MS Word. Jack Fu 47°38'N 122°08'W *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Oct 03 2000 - 10:35:52 PDT
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