Headed into Cardiff Fork from Alta today hoping for some visibility up high, we did get a little visibility while breaking trail up Cardiac Ridge but as usual it socked in for the trip down. The main instability of the day was long running sluffs in the steeper terrain. We entered through the Key Hole N facing and basically cleaned the whole run out with one ski cut, which was expected. What wasn't expected was the long running natural sluffs coming of the rocks on Cardiac Ridge, more than once we had to dodge fast running sluffs entraining enough snow to knock you down and take you for a ride. These sluff were being caused by the wind up high sending spindrifts onto the main slope and triggering the sluffs. The one sluff that we barley had time to back peddle and avoid ran almost 1000ft and left a 3 foot pile of debris at the toe. Basically all the terrain under the SE facing rocks in Cardiac Ridge had sluffed out by the time we left, burying our up track in several places. The sluffs were running on a melt freeze crust on the SE facing, but the E and NE portions of the ridge were also sluffing naturally and with ski cuts, the biggest one was on E facing, we ski cut it and it ran on thin layer of faceted snow sitting on wind board.

Photos: Sluffing on the Ridge and the Key Hole, wind causing spindrifts in the rocks

Thinking moderate if the wind continues to move snow, and a suspect bonding of the new snow to the old surface, prabably low in mid elevation protected terrain.