Took a trip to Cardiff this afternoon to see if the new snow was bonding to the old surface, seemed to be bonding fairly well on all but the highest ridge lines were it was wind affected and slabbed up. The new snow consisted of about 1 to 2 inches of graupel on the bottom and another inch of medium density snow on top. Winds were loading the SE facing slopes on the ridges but not down lower on the slopes. There was some serious graupel pooling under steep slopes and rock bands that might come into play if we receive a decent load of snow. The graupel was the weak link in the snow today, had some cracking out of wind drifts on the high ridges and it was moving above the graupel on the wind affected surface snow. Interesting point is that none of the previous snow pack before the storm was frozen, I could punch my pole through the snow pack on all aspects except for SW, damp snow was underlying all S aspects and E as well, N facing I could punch my pole through the thin crust and find dry snow underlying it. Lots of cross loading in the high alpine, The chutes into Cardiac Bowl off the top of Superior were being cross loaded through out the day. Would expect shallow wind slabs releasing in the AM in this type of terrain, not sure of the snow totals for tomorrow but if they exceed forecasted amounts I would take a step back and think about my routes, hard bed surface with graupel as the weak layer might be worth thinking about. Photos, wind, graupel, and cracking, skiing wise smooth but bottom feeding on steeper slopes.