Work resumes at Regent’s Slide on Hwy. 1 after storm, mud flow
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Caltrans resumes slide clearing at Regent’s Slide, due to set reopening timeline Thursday
- Repair measures, such as using mesh drapery and shear dowels, stopped major debris fall
- Reopening date depends on work progress & weather; rain can loosen residual loose material
Recent rains sent mud onto Highway 1 at the Regent’s Slide area in Big Sur, but stabilization efforts on the hillside seem to have worked, keeping boulders and big debris flows off the roadway, according to a Caltrans spokesman.
Mud and water did ooze onto the roadway there during the stormy first weekend in January, spokesman Kevin Drabinski told The Tribune Monday. But crews should complete the cleanup and be back to work soon on efforts to reopen the long-closed site itself, he said.
Work at Regent’s Slide has included some dramatic and unusual measures, such as using large, remote-controlled excavators to scrape and sculpt, plus driving long, heavy steel “shear dowels” into the hillside and using helicopters to lay cable-net drapery mesh over the slope.
“The mesh netting did its job, stopping anything of significant size from reaching the roadway,” Drabinski said.
Among the actions that helped mitigate the mess this time was “before they put mesh on, they’d sculpted the face of that slope significantly,” Drabinski said.
What’s left were what he called some “pockets of loose material.”
“We need to see a couple of rains go through to loosen that eroding material, but there’s a limited quantity of it on that slope,” he added.
“We’ll be up there for the next couple of days, cleaning up,” he said on Monday.
Timeline for reopening Highway 1 to Big Sur
The next question is: When might the famous roadway reopen at Regent’s, about 28 miles north of the San Luis Obispo/Monterey county line?
As usual, it depends on weather and other conditions. Any significant rain can send boulders, rocks and muddy sludge from the route’s steep cliffs down onto the pavement. But more specifics should be sharable soon, Drabinski said.
“By sometime Thursday, we should have a timeline for when we think we can reopen,” he said of the closure that has prevented travelers from driving the entire scenic stretch from Cambria to Carmel for nearly three years.
Since September, Caltrans has estimated that they’d be able to reopen the road there as early as by the end of March, or at least sometime this spring.
From about 450 feet up on the cliff face, Regent’s Slide cascaded down on Feb. 9, 2024, burying the highway under tons of rock, mud and debris.
Earlier slides elsewhere along the route had closed the famous drive for overlapping periods starting in January 2023.
Work there had been slowed frequently, and stopped occasionally, especially by the hillside’s continued draining and sloughing off, and the weather.
But road-blocking slides and flows are common along the scenic highway. Drabinski said a brief road closure north of Ragged Point was caused by “some blocked culverts bringing water and debris over the roadway.”
Caltrans crews had that cleared by midday Sunday.
