On Saturday Mar. 8 Bob Howell skied the Potholes route to the open meadows on its upper section. Around noon the weather was sunny, but with very strong winds. Towards mid afternoon thin clouds came in, clearing somewhat by 6PM. The conditions on the trail were good, with 1 foot of relatively recent snow evident in trees and on stumps on the lower part of the trail, and 1 1/2 - 2 ft on the upper part. The snow was relatively heavy powder, and by the end of the day was becoming somewhat crusted where it was subject to sun or wind. I was the only person on the Potholes route today, breaking fresh trail from Green Rock up to the meadows. The recent snowfall was deep enough to almost bury the temporary diamond stakes on the lower part (I raised the ones I could) and the snow was plastered onto the trees enough that at times it took a little work to discern the trail and the markers. (There were a large number of skiers in the parking lot, apparently using the Libby Creek trail.) At 3 PM I dug a snow pit at NAD27 13T 0396765 4579954, elevation 10450 ft. on one of the open slopes below where the trail enters the first of the upper open meadows. This snow pit was about 30 ft south of the one from Feb. 15, and somewhat further south of the ones from Jan. 11 and Feb. 8. It was on a 20 deg. slope facing 88 deg. (East). The pit showed the following snow pack structure. # Height Temp Comments Hardness Snow grain structure (cm) (C) air -3.5 ----199------------------------------------------------------------------- ----199--------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- 08 fresh fist 0.3 mm dendritic crystals fragments ----193------------------------------------------------------------------- ----193--------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- 07 190 -4.0 3 finger 0.3 mm more rounded dendritic fragments ----180-- -5.0------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 170 -5.5 2 finger 0.5 mm even more rounded 160 -6.0 ----158------------------------------------------------------------------- ----158--------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- 150 -6.0 05 140 -5.5 1 finger 0.3 mm rounded 130 -5.0 ----129------------------------------------------------------------------- ----129--------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- 04 120 -4.5 1 finger 1.0 mm slightly faceted 110 -4.5 ----104------------------------------------------------------------------- ----104--------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- 100 -4.0 03 90 -3.5 1 finger 1.0 mm slightly faceted 80 -3.0 ---- 72-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 70 -3.0 02 60 -2.5 1 finger 1.5 mm faceted 50 -2.5 40 -1.5 ---- 30-- -1.0 ------------------------------------------------------------------ 20 -0.5 01 10 0.0 depth hoar 3 fingers 3.0 mm faceted ---- 0 0.0 ------------------------------------------------------------------ ground Shovel shear test. Working down through the pack Light force for failure near bottom of layer #6, perhaps at 5/6 interface Moderately Light force for failure near bottom of layer #5 Moderately hard force for failure near top of layer #3 Lower part is well consolidated till you reach the depth hoar layer #1 In the Rutschblock test: (Note: This only applies to the upper part of the pack. That pack is now deep enough that I couldn't isolate the block all the way down to the depth hoar layer at the bottom -- so this test doesn't measure stability with respect to it.) The block failed after several moderate jumps near the top of layer #5 Summary: The snow is now 199 cm deep, 47 cm deeper than in a similar location on Feb. 15. It wasn't possible to discern as much structure in the pack as on that earlier date, in particular some of the intermediate hard layers. However the overall structure is similar. This location may be subject to disturbance by some ski tracks through the meadow although that wasn't obvious in the pit. The depth hoar at this location seems (as it did on Feb. 15) to be slowly consolidating but overall pack stability with respect to it is hard to test. This is significantly different than the pit dug on Feb. 1 on a south facing slope off the Libby Creek trail, where the depth hoar continues to have almost no strength. The middle of the pack seems reasonably well consolidated. The upper layers of relatively new snow (#6 #7 #8) are still only poorly consolidated, and seem to slide relatively easily on top of the older layer #5. The car counts were as follows. ------ 10:40 AM ------- with without trailers trailers Corner Mountain Lot 0 1 Little Laramie Lot 0 1 Ski Area to Cattleguard 87 1 Cattleguard to Turnaround 28 13 Green Rock Picnic Gnd. Lot 0 10 Road above Turnaround 14 9 Total 129 35