My husband and I are retired and buy weekday season passes at Purgatory. We purchase them in April for the early discount. The Purg website said weekday-pass blackout dates had been reduced to just Christmas week. However, when I bought the passes online, the “purchase” page listed two Spring Break weeks as blacked-out. We’d be very upset if this were true. With climate change, our ski window is shrinking. In the last few years, it has been reduced to limited skiing in December and marginal skiing as March ends. Given only about 13 weeks of skiing annually, each blackout week constitutes about 8 percent of our window. We’d appreciate you looking into this. – Kathy Parcell

Action Line congratulates you on an active retirement filled with numbers – like doing “powder 8’s” midweek.

But we should look at some other digits. Like 18. That’s the correct number of weeks in a typical ski season, not 13.

Sure enough, Purgatory’s 2014-15 season spanned a dozen and a half weeks, from Nov. 28 through Sunday, plus bonus days this weekend.

Some of those ski days were less than stellar, as you point out, and the weeks bookending the season can be iffy.

But a bad day skiing is far superior to a good day working. Being retired, you don’t have to worry about the latter.

At $389 when purchased before April 30, the weekday pass offers a potential of around 85 uncrowded days of skiing each season. That’s a bit more than $4.50 per day.

Action Line reconnected with his old colleagues at the Purgatory ticket office. Good news: the 2015-16 weekday season pass only will have one blackout week during Christmas.

The online checkout page was in error when it listed Spring Break blackouts. The page was fixed as of Friday.

But there is that pesky issue of climate change shrinking the “ski window.”

Here’s an idea: Since you can’t ski during December’s blackout week, why not devote the time to fight global warming?

A second option might be “pass insurance.”

Pass insurance is a program managed by TravelGuard, a company totally separate from Purgatory.

For 6 percent of your pass price, you can protect your purchase from a variety of “unforeseen events,” including sickness, pregnancy or injury, being quarantined, losing a job or being transferred.

But does pass insurance cover poor or no snow because of climate change? That’s a good question.

Action Line called the TravelGuard service desk. The nice representative pointed to Section II (b) of the Schedule of Benefits.

A season pass will be reimbursed “if the insured’s ... destination (is) made uninhabitable by natural disaster that is due to natural causes, vandalism or burglary.”

Here’s where it gets interesting. The policy defines “natural disaster” as “a flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, volcanic eruption, fire, wildfire or blizzard that is due to natural causes.”

Nowhere does it say drought or lack of snow as being a “disaster.” Any skier will tell you that no snow is about the worst thing a ski resort can experience.

Oddly, a “blizzard” is a “natural disaster,” despite the fact that a blizzard is precisely the event every pass holder lives for. Skiers want multiple blizzards.

So, ski-pass insurance looks like a good idea if your personal circumstances are in flux. But perhaps not if you fret about weather.

And just to be clear, ski-pass insurance won’t cover disasters like the City Council elections, the Arc of History, bridges that go nowhere and a lake that can’t be visited.

These are man-made disasters and, therefore, excluded. Dang.

Email questions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. You can request anonymity if your ski outfit consists of wool sweater and blue jeans sprayed with ‘Scotchgard.’