Big Sur: Highway 1 road closures lifting this weekend. But driving the entire span still impossible

Over a month after the flurry of winter storms buffeted the Big Sur coastline, some road closures are being lifted on Highway 1 this weekend.

That is good news for the small community of central coast residents who have been left trapped between landslides on either side of the winding cliffside road’s southern half.

But drivers hoping to make the iconic north-south trip in the coming weeks – and potentially months – will have to cancel their plans, according to Caltrans.

Although two sections of the scenic highway are reopening Saturday and Sunday, the agency still needs to move an estimated 1 million cubic feet of dirt – equivalent to 11 Olympic size swimming pools  – to replace a stretch of road fittingly called Paul’s Slide, near Limekiln State Park, where a devastating landslide split Highway 1 a month ago.

At the moment Caltrans has no time estimate for reopening this section of the road.

“We’re trying to do a ballet,” said Kevin Drabinski, Caltrans District 5 spokesperson, referring to the needs of local residents, tourists, and heavy machinery operations on the narrow two-lane road. It could be “several months” said Drabinski noting that Caltrans is “at the early stages of planning” the repairs.

The bright side is that travelers from the Bay Area can get to the majority of Big Sur landmarks, including Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park and the Henry Miller Library, before hitting the dead end at Paul’s Slide.

Rock slides are nothing new for Highway 1. They perennially cause havoc on the road as California’s highway agency is given the Sisyphean task of holding back the crumbling Santa Lucia mountainsides on one side and the wild Pacific Ocean on the other.

In 2017, the Mud Creek Slide blanketed the road with dozens of feet of dirt in the largest landslide ever recorded there. For 18 months Highway 1 remained closed to through traffic creating the “longest dead end” in California. Thousands of tourists unaware of the road closure were forced to make a U-turn after traveling for hours on the road.

The Caltrans work this weekend is bringing vital relief to around 250 people who live on the southern half of Highway 1. This community on the roughly 20-mile stretch from Ragged Point in the south to Paul’s Slide in the north has been largely trapped since the series of atmospheric river storms started in late December. The residents and business owners have relied on helicopter deliveries, stored goods, and small gardens.

“We stocked up for years,” said Kate Novoa, who runs a local blog that spreads vital community information about road closures. “We always make sure every winter that we can last a certain amount of time. The only thing that I ran low on was gasoline for my backup generator.”