Isolated a column that failed quite easily with a shovel shear about 25 cm deep. The block that pulled out split about in half at a subtle crust layer when I set it down. The block I removed was mostly 4 finger hardness and the underlying snow was a mix of one finger and pencil harness for the additional 70 cm or so that I exposed. Compressing the underlying column yielded no results, even with some AK leg compression, and sticking a ski pole into the snow stopped the grip hard 25 cm down. Totally different from the wet snowpack I saw yesterday in Meadow Chutes and quite stout.