New rockslide blocks Highway 1 in Monterey County near Lucia
With rain continuing to fall, more slides have closed Highway 1 at two locations between Ragged Point and Paul’s Slide, Caltrans said Thursday morning.
On Thursday, the road was closed from Nacimiento-Ferguson Road to Paul’s Slide, as a result of rocks in the roadway, Susana Cruz of Caltrans wrote in a press release. That covers a stretch of roughly three miles north to Paul’s Slide, roughly 21 miles north of the Monterey County line.
The debris is at the Chimney Slide, 20 miles north of the county line, where the road was closed once earlier this month. It remained active Thursday morning, Cruz said in a follow-up email.
Cruz said Caltrans was also “getting reports of some boulders spotted before Lucia and Pacific Valley.”
The new Chimney slide activity followed another incident of rocks in the road Wednesday, which closed the highway from Ragged Point (near the San Luis Obispo-Monterey County line) to Gorda. Previously, the road had been open north of Ragged Point to Salmon Creek, where it has been closed while Caltrans works to rebuild a section of highway demolished in last year’s Mud Creek slide.
The highway is expected to reopen at both locations Friday morning, Cruz said, after the current storm has passed and conditions have been assessed.
Late-season rains this month have kept road workers busy clearing mud, rocks and debris from North Coast roadways.
SLO County Public Works cleared a slide Wednesday that blocked Santa Rosa Creek Road about four miles from Coast Union High School, east of Cambria. On March 13, rocks and mud blocked Highway 1 at the Chimney Slide, but that slide was cleared the following day.
In Cambria, a small slide of rocks trickled down the hillside on Burton Avenue near the Cambria Nursery, but wasn’t nearly large enough to block traffic. Meanwhile, the Pinedorado Grounds on Main Street were flooded. Cambria Community Services District personnel arrived shortly after 8 a.m. to assess the situation there.
This story was originally published March 22, 2018 at 9:52 AM with the headline "New rockslide blocks Highway 1 in Monterey County near Lucia."