Boston-area residents frolic in epic snow; backyard igloos and mountaineering at MIT

Three students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology jokingly use mountaineering gear to make their way down from a massive snow pile on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass., Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2015. The mountain of excess snow has been dubbed the "Alps of MIT" and is being used for climbing, sledding and posing. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) (The Associated Press)

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Three students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology take a selfie after jokingly using mountaineering gear to make their way up a massive snow pile on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass., Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2015. The mountain of excess snow has been dubbed the "Alps of MIT" and is being used for climbing, sledding and posing. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) (The Associated Press)

Workers on lunch break from a nearby business take photos of a massive snow pile on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, Mass., Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2015. The mountain of excess snow has been dubbed the "Alps of MIT" and is being used for climbing, sledding and posing. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) (The Associated Press)

BOSTON – New England's winter blast is serious business, but there's been no shortage of shenanigans.

People have been jumping out windows into the snowbanks. Thrill-seekers have been snowmobiling through normally busy city streets. College students in Cambridge have been using mountaineering gear to scale a huge snowpile perhaps three stories high, dubbed "the Alps of MIT," despite the university's efforts to discourage it.

And on the website AirBnb, a few enterprising residents have been offering up chilly lodgings for rent: backyard igloos.

Boston — a city with a heavy concentration of college students at such schools as Harvard, MIT, Boston University and Northeastern — has been hit by 8 feet of snow over the past month.