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At a Glance Some parts of the Tahoe region saw more than 9 feet of snow.

The California Highway Patrol implored skiers to stay off the roads.

Towns along the routes to the mountains were inundated with stuck travelers.

Businesses couldn't handle the crowds and fights broke out in the street.

All that fresh snow and no way to get to it. That has been the dilemma facing many skiers and snowboarders hoping to hit the slopes this Presidents Day holiday weekend.

Now the towns along the mountain roads are begging travelers to stay away until the roads are clear.

Multiple storms brought more than 9 feet of snow to parts of the Tahoe region in the seven days ending Saturday morning, weather.com meteorologist Christopher Dolce said.

The California Highway Patrol on Saturday said travel to the south Lake Tahoe area was not recommended. Interstate 80 was closed for much of the day, and many drivers turned to U.S. 50. The highway patrol estimated the trip on U.S. 50 would take eight to 10 hours.

Caltrans repeated on Sunday that travel was not advised . The city of South Lake Tahoe said snow removal teams were having trouble keeping up and advised against traveling, too.

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Traffic on other highways was also crawling, if it was moving at all.

Placer County sheriff's Lt. Andrew Scott tweeted, "State Route 267 is so deep that plows can no longer plow. They have ordered up a large blower to try and clear the pass."

“If you set out toward Tahoe (Saturday), expect it can take you 10 to 15 hours, or you may never ever get there,” Officer Andrew Brown, a California Highway Patrol spokesman, said. “We can’t predict the weather, and that’s what we are up against.”

A Facebook post from CHP in Placerville put it much more bluntly: "STOP DRIVING UP HERE FROM OUT OF AREA . We cannot handle the amount of vehicles that keep coming up and getting stuck here. ... Just please stop coming up here. The situation is too much for the area to handle and there is nowhere for you to go."

Trooper Brown told the Sacramento Bee, “Cars are stopped all over the place , people are unprepared and it’s unacceptable."

Pollock Pines was another of the mountain communities swamped by travelers who couldn't make it to the resorts.

"They have nowhere to go to the bathroom, and there’s not enough restaurants. We have basically a couple restaurants that are open, one grocery store, two gas stations," resident Cathy Staller told KCRA. "They’re inundating the town. Double parking, triple parking onto the streets so no one has any way to get out, get in, get to the grocery store, and emergency services couldn’t even leave the fire department."

<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/AP19046860094001.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273" srcset="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/AP19046860094001.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273 400w, https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/AP19046860094001.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551 800w" > Two men snowboard down a steep street in South Lake Tahoe, California, on Friday, February 15, 2019. Skiers eager to hit the slopes had to sit out a Presidents' Day holiday weekend as heavy snow and rain fell for a fourth straight day in California's mountains, where the snow was so deep in some areas plows couldn't go out and cities were running out of places to pile it. (Ryan Hoffman/The Tahoe Tribune via AP)

Staller and Jim McCarthy, owner of 50 Grand Restaurant and Bar, said they saw fights in the streets as the night went on. One man pounded on the restaurant's door demanding to use the bathroom, McCarthy said. When McCarthy refused, the man did his business on the porch.

"We cleaned it up, but it's not the behavior that I would like to see," McCarthy told KCRA.

Barbara Arenz, a resident of Pollock Pines, told the San Francisco Chronicle that many people spent the night in their cars , parked along the town’s main streets or at the Safeway parking lot.

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“I know people want to go and have their vacations and they plan on it, but sometimes you need to have a Plan B, especially if you’re expecting bad weather,” Arenz said.

Staller said, "I think all of our systems up here just kind of were so overwhelmed by the people, the whole thing was a total failure. They should've been stopped down the road after that first storm we had when people still don't have power and stuff up here. So that we can survive. We can take on some of the people, but we could not take on everybody that wanted their vacation weekend."