On Sunday Dec. 28 I went up to the Snowy Range Ski area to get in a bit of skiing. My wife was going to come up later in the day to ski with me. I had made a few runs with Myron when he was called about the search. Since I had my backcountry gear in the car, I offered my services as well. He and I staged with Neil Mathisen at the end of the road.  I didn't note the time but it was probably around 11:00 am. More Sheriff's personnel/equipment arrived. It was decided to send me with two deputies in the Sheriff's Thiokol snow cat. We headed up the road. We went in on the road to the Sugarloaf Rec area. We saw many snowmachiners playing. No sign of the missing couple. We then headed down the road past Lake Marie to about milepost 43 (I think).  We passed many snow machiners, but again no sign of the missing folks.  At that point the Thiokol started having mechanical problems so we headed back.  Several breakdowns later we limped into the trailhead about 7:30 pm.  I had hoped to return to help on Monday, but was unable to do so.
  Weather was generally awful.  High wind, snow fall, and poor to near zero visibility.  At the point where we turned around I noticed some cracking and other obvious slab indications in the snowpack.  That's no suprise considering the heavy winds all day long.  My guess is that avalanche potential was really serious up high.
  My observation regarding use of the Thiokol (assuming it were running OK) is that it doesn't work so well for searching (too slow and can't go everywhere the snow machiners go), but that it would make a great mobile base of operations. It also provides excellent warmth and shelter, so if we had found severely hypothermic or frost bitten people, it would have been a good plan to move them by sled down to where the Thiokol could reach, then get them inside it and out of the weather. Then use it to transport them to the trailhead.  I rather doubt that a helicopter would have been able to do us any good up there in those conditions.