California Peaks, Meet Some Solid Snowfall

Mammoth Mountain, June Mountain, and the SoCal slopes are all reporting impressive flakes.

A ROAD TRIP... to somewhere special isn't solely about the special place at the end of the highway. It's about this one stop you couldn't resist making, at the jerky hut or tea house or shake shop. It's also about the wrong turn you took several hours ago, the one that led you down the fascinating two-laner you definitely weren't supposed to be on. And stopping off to see something amazing, like a natural wonder that's an hour off the freeway? Yeah, you're probably gonna, if you're a seasoned on-the-roader. One is also tempted to think of other traveling things in the same light, especially when those anticipated things don't keep to the schedule we humans were hoping for. Take snow, which doesn't travel by asphalt, granted, but does eventually make its way to our mountains and higher-elevation destinations come wintertime. A person might have thought that snow recently took a wrong turn, or stopped off at a roadside attraction, in December and January, seeing as how winter skies remained blue-ish and ski resorts lightly flaked. But then...

FEBRUARY 2018 ARRIVED, and the holiday weekend in the middle of it, which saw some glacial winds and impressive accumulation. Okay, "glacial" might be a bit of a fanciful stretch, but not if you were up at Mammoth Mountain, or June Mountain, or Snow Valley or Big Bear on Monday, Feb. 19. Even Bodie, which is distinctly not a ski place but does call Mono County home, like Mammoth, saw some much-needed snow. So what should you expect if you make a run for the hills? Mammoth Mountain saw 3 to 4 inches on the morning of Feb. 19, with more expected later in the day, and 25 out of the 27 lifts are open (the base depth is three feet at the Main Lodge and seven feet at the summit). Snow Valley at Running Springs received an inch, adding to the three inches from last week, and Big Bear was nicely blanketed with just over an inch as the sun rose on Presidents Day 2018. And June Mountain also inched it up in the morning, with several more inches hoped for later in the day.

SO... did wintertime simply take the scenic route this year? Did it just fully arrive in the middle of February? Well, like all travelers, sometimes snow can't be expected to arrive promptly when we think it will or should. Still, we're glad to see it, as are the people making the most of the slopes a month out from spring's first hello.

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