Photos below of 1) Mud Creek (PM 8.9) Amazing aerial, courtesy of John Madonna from May 28. 2 and 3) Paul’s Slide (PM 21.6) photo from yesterday. 4) Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge (PM 45.52)– Casting Abutment 1 back wall, rebar installation and iron worker trimming long vertical bars.
*NO MAJOR CONVOYS SCHEDULED FOR NEXT WEEK (JULY 10-14)*
HIGHWAY 1 UPDATE – FRIDAY, JULY 7:
STATE ROUTE 1 CLOSURE FROM NORTH OF SALMON CREEK (JUST SOUTH OF THE RANGER STATION [PM 3])TO THE MAF (PM 46.35), NORTH OF THE PFEIFFER CANYON BRIDGE CONSTRUCTION IN MON COUNTY.
PAUL’S SLIDE ON STATE ROUTE 1 CONTINUES WITH USUAL ACCESS SCHEDULE TO LOCAL RESIDENTS/DELIVERIES. WE WILL CONTINUE RE-ASSESSING AND AN UPDATE PROVIDED BY MID-DAY MONDAY, JULY 10 (See Update under “Paul’s Slide” for more details.)
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STATE ROUTE 1 REMAINS FULLY CLOSED IN BOTH DIRECTIONS AT MUD CREEK DUE TO CONTINUED SLIDE ACTIVITY. DELIVERY VEHICLES AND LOCAL RESIDENTS WILL NEED TO USE NACIMIENTO-FERGUSSON TO EXIT SOUTH OR TO CLEAR THE ACCESS TIMES AT PAUL’S SLIDE.
THE INFORMATION BELOW IS FOR LOCAL RESIDENTS AND DELIVERY VEHICLES ONLY;THE ONLY ACCESS TO THE PUBLIC HAS CHANGED AND IS SHOWN BELOW.
Public Access on Highway 1 now at two locations:
The closure has moved up five miles to the north from Ragged Point (Slo PM 72.87) to north of Salmon Creek and just south of the Ranger Station (Mon PM 3.0).
Using Nacimiento-Fergusson, will be to Gorda (PM 10) to the south and to Limekiln State Park (PM 20.76) to the north.
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Mud Creek (PM 8.9) – MUD CREEK HAD A MAJOR SLIDE/SLIP OUT AT 9:30 PM, SATURDAY, MAY 20 – IT LOST MILLIONS OF CUBIC YARDS OF MATERIAL. GEOTECHNICAL AND RADAR ASSESSMENTS CONTINUE AT THE SITE AND INCLUDES: FIELD MAPPING, RADAR MONITORING, REVIEW OF USGS PHOTOGRAMMETRIC SURVEY DATA AND BORINGS. IT REMAINS IMPASSABLE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
Paul’s Slide (PM 21.6) – CONTINUES WITH USUAL ACCESS SCHEDULE TO LOCAL RESIDENTS/DELIVERIES.
12:00PM Monday / Wednesday / Friday– A single caravan south and a single caravan north, you must be in line by noon! There may be up to 45 minute delay to clear the road before the opening.
Delivery vehicles (Restriction is 30 feet maximum length and 50,000 lbs. maximum weight) can now use all access windows 7 days a week.
Access times for the morning and evening are still the same except for Friday:
5:30AM to 6:00AM and 7:00PM to 7:30PM – Sat.-Thurs.
Friday’s hours: 5:30AM – 8:00AM and 6:00PM to 7:30PM
The noon opening will be for PAUL’S SLIDE ONLY, (NOT MUD CREEK); you will need to use Nacimiento-Fergusson Road to exit the coast.
The targeted “public access” date is currently mid-July (July 15-20), dependent on roadway conditions and slide activity. A closer date will be determined next week.
Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge [PCB] (PM 45.52)
Girders continue to be fabricated in Vallejo, CA and are being sent to Linden, CA (near Stockton) for painting before being trucked over to the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge construction site.
Temporary Tower completion and welding
Mud Creek assessment progress continues but is closed until further notice. We continue to bring convoys with 10-wheelers containing loads of material: gravel, sand, equipment and other items via convoys through Nacimiento-Fergusson with CHP escorts – the next convoy is yet to be determined.
Kate,
PCB image not showing up for me- too hot…Have a great problem free weekend. Some road clearance @Paul’s Slide makes for some temporary relief…
Yeah, I couldn’t get it to save or load or whatever. Sorry. Too hot to care.
https://bigsurkate.blog
Kate,
Perfect- props to the photo takers and the fogless shadows that may lurk in the background.
Could the Army Core of Engineers speed up Mud Creek cleanup assuming the slide stop moving and was safe to do so?..
Whether the Army COE or anybody else can do it, SOMEBODY has to decide about 2,000,000 cubic yards of rock, and soil.
Where does it go?? Highway 1 to the South will be destroyed with 100,000++ truckloads of material, and NF is absolutely inappropriate.
The Marine sanctuary laws are going to have to be emergency modified for everyone’s safety.
wcray,
Giant cruise ship/barge loads of material and aid the rest of the state’s weak levee systems. Next destination find a landing spot to transfer those loads inland. CCC & NMS better come to a solution to aid all areas with least amount of scars to its shores.
You’d sorta think the Marine Sanctuary’s already been stepped on by the slide itself. What difference would it make to bulldoze some more slide down the slope?
a landslide is a one-big-hit, dozers grinding away is every day more more more. imagine being punched hard in the chest once, vs being punched again and again and again for weeks/months. the silt-load to all marine life within sometimes miles is strong. marine life around slide of ’82 at JP Burns still not recovered 35 years later, and THAT is when they figured out, ‘oh, this isn’t so good for other life forms’… it smothers all life. it’s not dust-free rock at Mud Creek.
doesn’t mean that it won’t be done, but let’s be clear the impact to a Marine Reserve is strong and real. don’t be fooled just because we can’t see most of the life that is there, it IS there, lovely as any Redwood forested canyon, full of living creatures now. ZERO fish would breed there for decades.
again, doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
imagine the outrage if we proposed to dump the whole load into an onshore canyon, take your pick for which one.
I don’t have the answer, I drive the road. just sayin’
I understand everything you’re saying, Richard, and I actually don’t dispute it. I’m totally behind Marine Sanctuaries, always have been. Nevertheless, as you pointed out, the area around JPBurns has still not recovered 35 years ago. Presumably, the area around Mud Creek will take decades to recover as well. And landslides into the ocean have been a constant occurrence on the coast since it first rose out of the water. So I find myself wondering, all in all, if pushing the slide into the ocean, as quickly as possible, isn’t the most eco-friendly first step, always assuming that restoring the highway is a given. Obviously, leaving things as they are and saying bye-bye to the through route is THE greenest approach.
hmm, not sure you’re understanding. the difference I point toward is between a single event happening in minutes vs a long-term ( months, perhaps more ) of incessant, cumulative insults to the ecology. kind of like one strong dusty day as opposed to many months of endless ‘dust’ in the sea. see pictures of the dust bowl for analogy? most of the creatures there cannot move, ( no aquatic Okies… ) and so are smothered. the area around JP Burns was compromised not so much by the original slide ( tho of course that was an impact ) but by the many months-long grinding away of the mountain and dumping it into the sea below. what with wandering, shifting tides and currents, man, it just goes everywhere, so is a much broader, stronger impact.
and of course that whole coast rising from the water=changes, yes. but for most of that we humans hadn’t already badly impacted the rest of the seas, there was a rich, diverse, functional ocean ecosystem everywhere else. not that way now, is it?
but all of that aside if we agree that dumping spoils into a marine sanctuary is ‘Not Good’ then let’s just not do that. I’m rather amused/horrified by how readily people will say oh well, we needed to….
how about simply carving a new roadbed on the contour line of the new face? about as simple as gets. go around the obstacle, eh?
or power a tunnel through the junk laying on the roadway?
why even consider moving/removing all that stuff? this coast is always changing so lets keep adapting to the changes instead of trying to make it ‘the way it was’.
but of course this will be government doing their thing, so logic may not apply. nothing any of us thinks will matter to what the gov’t does, it’s just us talking to ourselves, pleasant as that is, laughing.
it will be interesting to see what eventuates.
Heck, I’m kind of naive in that regard, I guess. I had just *assumed* a new roadbed would be carved on the new topography, and I didn’t think the detritus from that would be all that dramatic. I had no idea anyone was even thinking of trying to get rid of the whole slide, truly. That’d be pretty ridiculous.
Anyway, I’m just being cranky. Pay me no heed. I’ve been cruising the Big Sur Coast since the mid-60s, and I lived in the Carmel Highlands for a few years in the late 70s-early 80s. Big Sur’s always been my special place. I live on Cape Cod now, but have family in the Bay Area so get back often.
You’re no doubt better-informed about this stuff than I am. Peace, brother 🙂
Sometimes things aren’t what they seem. It is a blessing in disguise for Big Sur, these environmental debacles. The Universe is speaking, with its endless apocolyptic occurances. Time To Listen. Stop trying to put things back as they previously were. Clearly the Universe prefers a different scenario. This blog for the last year has been nothing but a Diary of Disasters illuminated on a daily basis.
One with a moducum of intelligence can see business as usual will never be acceptable. Put the environment first, human interests second.
Amen…
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