Noon – From Cal-Trans:
Cal-Trans official press release says there is no anticipated date of re-opening of the road.
9:30 am – semi-official report: there is no equipment buried under the slide, none of the rock shed is affected, the slide didn’t take out the light, only the wires going to the light, and it is expected that the road will be open in 3-4 days, but still waiting for the geologist’s analysis.
8:30 am – reported by local in comment section below: “Just went for a look, was told by the flagger that the slide has buried part of the rock shed, with much of their equipment, and will probably be closed for at least a couple of days. Also unofficial, but that was at 8:20 this morning.” If all that equipment is buried, it will be more than a couple days!
7:30 am – Per one of my “unofficial” but very reliable sources, the slide occurred just south of the new Rock Shed at Rain Rocks, and took out the light on the southern end of the construction. I have no word from Cal-Trans “official” sources, yet, about how long the closure will last. I suspect I will not get any official word until mid-day or later, as the resident geologist will have to evaluate the situation, then get the word to the PR guys/gals. Will update as soon as I have additional information. BTW, the CHP website no longer shows this closure, but that does not mean it is open.
Just went for a look, was told by the flagger that the slide has buried part of the rock shed, with much of their equipment, and will probably be closed for at least a couple of days. Also unofficial, but that was at 8:20 this morning.
Hi Kate, you probably noticed that the CHP site now has been updated and the north hard closure has been moved up to Point 16. Last CHP entry was 08:39 this AM.
sunday at 7am i actually passed the slide with my truck, going south. i must have been one of the first people coming across it. the road was fully covered, side to side with about 5 – 10 inches worth of rocks. i decided to chance it and drove over them, thinking by the time i’d be driving back up north a few hours later, caltrans would have cleaned it up with one of their plow trucks.
upon returning in order to pick up my things from my lodging just 0.5 miles north of the slide, at 10am i ran into caltrans and saw the slide again: this time, there was about 10 times the amount of what i had seen in the morning. including large rocks, 1 – 2 ft in diameter. and it was raining more rocks as we were (way too) close to it. they were closing it down right then.
this resulted in having to take nacimiento fergusson to the 101, up to monterey and then south the 1 to get back to my lodging that without the slide was about 60 seconds driving distance from the bridge, and then the whole thing back to drive back to LA via monterey. about 11 hours of driving instead of the 5 it would have normally taken without the road closure.
😉
I knew that something was up when I was driving back to Pacific Valley School late Saturday night after taking my load of fish up north to market.
I was surprised to see a lot of rocks in an unlikely spot at Rain-Rocks, where the screen should have been protecting the road. HHHHMMMM!
A few groups of tourists mentioned that there was one lane kinda clear (with cones, but no flagger) late this afternoon, and moved the cones and drove though.