By Patric Hedlund and Marcy Axness, TME

There was Breaking News on the Snow Bunny front the first Sunday of 2019. California Highway Patrol Lieutenant Curtis Fouyer (from the Fort Tejon office) brought in extra CHP units to help with snow play visitors rushing to the top of Mt. Piños early January 6.

No official count was taken, but CHP estimated there were about 300 vehicles, with an average of four people per car.

“By 8 a.m. we had snow visitors parking on both sides of the road up there,” Fouyer said, “blocking traffic, creating unsafe conditions, causing a back-up.” [For the record, unless marked otherwise, parking is allowed on Mt. Piños only on the downhill side of the road, completely off…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

Snow visitors ignored the ‘Road Closed’ and ‘No Parking’ signs as they swarmed up Cuddy Valley Road and Mt. Pinos Road Sunday morning, January 6. Parking on both sides of the road blocked the roadway. CHP officers had to order vehicles to leave the area to create safer conditions, then shut the road to further traffic (below).

This stack of broken sleds and snow toys is just the beginning of the headache that greeted mountain residents Monday morning.

Snow play visitors Rhonda and Jeff Noble built a real snow bunny in 1968 in Frazier Park. The Noble family then moved to the mountain—a place of happy memories—to join the community.

An amazing sight greeted mountain residents on Monday morning: a landscape of litter left by snow play visitors…and something else.

Dionne Bolton’s family played in the snow at Cerro Noroeste

Dionne Bolton’s family played in the snow at Cerro Noroeste

After: This is the tidy result of the work by Jon Price (Mountainside Disposal) and Roger Csulak to pick up residents’ and snow bunny litter.

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This is part of the January 11, 2019 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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