Part of Highway 1 reopens near Big Sur as Caltrans chips away at slide repairs
A key stretch of Highway 1 that’s been closed to traffic for most of the year reopened on Friday.
Caltrans has been chipping away at repairs to the scenic highway near Big Sur after a mudslide wiped out a portion of the road during winter storms — clearing access to businesses that were difficult to reach during earlier road closures.
On Friday, Caltrans crews completed repairs at Dani Creek just north of the Paul’s Slide site in Monterey County, opening up 0.6 miles of the highway that were previously closed, the agency announced in a news release.
This moved the northern end of the Highway 1 closure south from the town of Lucia to north of Paul’s Slide, according to Caltrans. Still, the southern closure of Highway 1 ends at Limekiln State Park.
That 1.5-mile stretch remains blocked off to vehicle, bicycle, and pedestrian traffic, Caltrans said.
“Travelers on southbound Highway 1 will pass the repair at Dani Creek and encounter a paved turnaround area at the north end of Paul’s Slide. There is no parking at this location,” Caltrans said in the release.
Now, travelers have direct access to New Camaldoli Hermitage, a working monastery in Big Sur that offers spiritual retreats.
The monastery was difficult to access during the previous closure of Dani Creek.
“To make repairs at Dani Creek, crews created access in steep terrain down to the bottom of the slide, removed some 30,000 cubic yards of slide material and built support from the bottom of the slide with fill material,” the release said.
Crews also installed an 8-foot-diameter culvert under the roadway, replacing the culvert damaged during the storms.
Caltrans is working seven days a week to repair the Paul’s Slide site, the release said, but it’s not clear when Highway 1 will be fully reopened there.
