High Price Hide and Seek.

It does seem that, every year, some people put themselves in such a position on Mt. Hood that massive efforts are expended to get them down.

The Doser lacks any understanding of why three people would venture -
on a dangerous avalanche-prone slope
in mid-winter
with a heavy storm in the immediate offing
without sufficient means to weather a storm and
without any of the inexpensive signal devices.

Who pays for attempts to save such persons? Have those who have made those attempts ever lost their lives in the process? (Other than the one helicopter pilot who died trying to get the whining John Day off Denali a few years ago.)

The Doser has acquired one, incomprehensible, explanation for the lack of signal devices: they are not required because carrying one would make the adventurer overly-confident and, thus, cause him to do what his good sense tells him not to do.