On Saturday Jan. 11 Bob Howell skied the Potholes route to a spot near the 
intersection with the North Folk trail, near the Brooklyn Lake road.  The 
weather was overcast, with very light snow developing near the end of the 
day.  The winds were almost calm earlier, picking up somewhat towards 
evening.  The conditions on the trail were good once within the trees above 
the lower open south-facing slopes.  In the trees there was a couple inches 
of relatively fresh powder.  In fact there was enough snow to ski the whole 
trail, even the lower open slopes if one stayed near their edges, although 
the snow in those lower open regions consisted of multiple layers of 
breakable crust.

I met two other skiers on the trail.

At 3:30 PM I dug a snow pit at NAD27 13T 0396757 4579990 elevation 10450 on 
one of the open slopes just below where the trail enters the first of the 
upper open meadows.  This was a 18 deg. slope facing 100 deg (ESE).  The 
air temperature was -6C.  The snow depth was 83 cm.  The pit showed the 
following snow pack structure.

   # Height Temp   Layer comments Hardness   Snow grain structure
      (cm)   (C)
  -----83----------------------------------------------------------------
   6   80   -6.5    fresh snow     fist        0.3 mm dendritic crystals
  -----76----------------------------------------------------------------
   5   70   -6.0                   3 fingers   1   mm rounded crystals
  ---- 63-----------thin harder surface separating #4 from #5------------
       60   -5.5
   4   50   -5.0                   1 finger    1   mm rounded crystals
  ---- 43----------------------------------------------------------------
       40   -4.0
   3   30   -3.0    "sugary" snow  3 fingers   3   mm faceted crystals
  ---- 26----------------------------------------------------------------
       20
   2   10   -1.0    "sugary" snow  2 fingers   3   mm faceted crystals
  ----  9----------------------------------------------------------------
   1                 icy           1 fingers   3   mm faceted but
                                                       cemented crystals
  ----  0    0.0--------------------------------------------------------

Shovel shear test.  Working down through the pack
   Slight           force for failure at layer ~ 4/5 interface (~63 cm)
   Moderately light force for failure at layer ~ 2/3 interface (~26 cm)

In the Rutschblock test it required a light jump to cause failure near the 
layer ~ 4/5 interface and a couple moderate jumps to cause failure near the 
layer 2/3 interface.

Summary:  The thin hard surface between 4/5 represents a potential sliding 
surface.  The lower part of the pack (layers 2 and 3) is poorly 
consolidated and also fails relatively easily.

The car counts were as follows.

                          ------- noon  -------
                             with    without
                           trailers  trailers
  Corner Mountain Lot         0         0
  Little Laramie Lot          0         1
  Ski Area to Cattleguard    17         0
  Cattleguard to Turnaround  28         4
  Green Rock Picnic Gnd. Lot  0         6
  Road above Turnaround      26         6

  Total                      71        17