I joined the UDOT guys Sunday afternoon to chat while they performed their monthly snowpit analysis.  The biggest thing I noted was that the weak layer had a softer hand hardness than I expected.  Covington called it Fist and it certainly was pretty soft despite having over 3 feet of snow sitting on top of it.  The overall depth was almost 5 feet (150cm) yet the weight of the new snow has not smashed the weak layer into submission yet.

The compression test failed at 21, which surprised me a little also.  I expected that we'd have to beat on it a little more to get a failure.

The extended column test was more stubborn but finally propagated after applying the Wendy Wagner modified boot force.