Snowpit from Elephant's Back / Red Lake

An AIARE Level 1 guided group toured up from Red Lake parking area towards Elephant's Back Saturday 1/23/21 around 10:30 am. We dug snow pits at 8,250 ft elevation on the NW (328 degrees) aspect on an 18 degree slope. Winds were calm with mostly cloudy skies and some snow flurries. There was 1-3 inches of cold fresh snow on top of a hefty melt-freeze crust that was supportable. Air temp was 25 degrees. The instructor's 76 cm deep snow pit experienced a CTM sudden collapse at 16 controlled taps. The failure was approx. 44 cm down from the snow surface. A student group's snowpit compresssion test yielded a similar result. Another snowpit experienced no failure (CTN). The buried weak layer is suspected to be the December 11th facets which was very weak and sugary.. An extended column test was completed but the result was tossed due to human error. The propagation saw test  result was  EST-56/100 END.