From 2005: Mammoth snow pile succumbs to spring
“We take pride in the pile. Every little inch we get up higher is fun to us.”
This story was originally published on Saturday, Apr. 9, 2005.
Mount Pietro - Philadelphia’s last icy remnant of winter - is no more.
Once a two-story mountain of snow in the Andorra Shopping Center parking lot, Mount Pietro could not withstand the pummeling rains and punishing sun of the last week.
After clinging so hard to life, it melted yesterday afternoon into its final, muddy puddle.
No ruby red shoes were found, but many urban artifacts did emerge in recent weeks as the pile evaporated, including an Acme shopping cart; a bottle of peppermint schnapps - empty, of course; and a thong.
At its most impressive, after a Feb. 28 snowfall, this Alp of Andorra at Ridge and Henry Avenues was 21 feet high, 77 feet deep, and 112 feet across.
Mount Pietro was a freak of plowing nature, created by a five-man snowplow crew.
Rather than creating numerous smaller piles - the norm in mall parking lots across America - these men created one giant mountain. Storm after storm, they kept pushing snow down the sloping parking lot.
“I love pushing snow,” said Larry Cuoci, whose company plows the parking lot. “Guys like us make a sport out of it, to see what we can do with the pile. We take pride in the pile. Every little inch we get up higher is fun to us.”
Over the years, Cuoci’s crew has nicknamed its creations after the first name of whoever was driving the front-end loader - this winter’s Mount Pietro after Peter, Mount Augustus after Gus, Mount Antonio after Tony, and of course Mount Lorenzo after Cuoci himself.
Nobody grieved yesterday over the loss of Mount Pietro. Nobody even noticed. Such coldness, if you will pardon the pun, in the big city. At the car wash across the parking lot, people washed their cars as if it were, well, springtime.
White as snow this pile was not.
The exhaust of city buses, cars in the parking lot, and dirt and cinders picked up by the plows turned Mount Pietro gray and gritty. No matter.
“I’m a mountain climber,” said Paul Knysh, 5, climbing it on March 18.
The boy clambered down, held up his hands, covered with black mud, soot, grime.
“We got tissues in the car, I hope!” said his father, George Knysh.
By 3 p.m. yesterday, the ice surrendered. The puddle that was Mount Pietro snaked its way to the nearby storm drain, then on to the Schuylkill, the Delaware River, and into the Atlantic Ocean.
The circle of life.