Whether you use the term "heaps" or "bunches" or "mounds" when it comes to the snow in the upper reaches of the Sierra Nevada this winter, well, know that your description likely fits.
For we've read the reports, the ones naming January 2017 as "the snowiest month on record" at Mammoth Mountain, and we've seen the astounding photographs, the ones that only show the rooflines of various buildings and the lifts where no chairs may be seen.
The lift chairs and buildings haven't disappeared, of course; we just can't discern them due to the prodigious amounts of cold, white stuff.
Here's what alllll of that snowfall brings, and, nope, it isn't a "May flowers" kind of rhyme: The mountain ski resort announced that it will stay open through Tuesday, July 4.
Stay open, mind you, for skiing, and not biking or hiking or the other higher elevation pleasures of summertime (though, of course, those can also be pursued around the Sierra in July, just not on the slopes).
This isn't the first Independence Day that Mammoth Mountain has vowed to remain open, but stating it will do so months ahead of time, in February, is notable.
But when a resort has already experienced 430 inches of snow, thus far, in a single season, well, yeah: Summer skiing is a given.
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Will more snow be added to that 430 inches in the days ahead? Don't laugh too hard into your fleece scarf; of course more snow is due, as that's the tale of the 2016-2017 winter at Mammoth Mountain.
In fact, a mix of snow and snow showers are set to begin on the Thursday ahead of Presidents Day Weekend at the poles-and-parties play place and last for, wait for it, are you ready, eleven days, per early forecasts.
Be careful on your trip up, of course, and expect to find a prodigious amount of snow on the mountain, the kind of accumulation that will be spoken of, and possibly sung about, in ballad form, for years to come.
And while you may be able to ski while rocking a t-shirt and shorts on July 4, that isn't the case in February at Mammoth Mountain. Pack warmly, very warmly, for another epic frost-and-brrr kind of storm.
