What’s being called “the mother of all landslides” will likely close a 1/3 of a mile stretch for a whole year. Photo: Reuters
A few days ago, news broke that a massive landslide buried a large stretch of Highway 1 along California’s Big Sur coastline. Now, officials are estimating it’ll be up to a year before it’s open again.
The slide, which happened at Mud Creek in the southern part of Big Sur, is about 1,500 feet long, 1,000 feet tall, and about 40 feet deep. ” It’s definitely breathtaking,” said Caltrans spokeswoman Susana Cruz to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “It’s definitely massive.”
The landslide was so large it created 16 acres of new beachfront and is one of the biggest slides in recent memory. “This is the biggest that we’ve seen in a long, long time,” Cruz said. “I wouldn’t say the biggest in California, but it’s probably the biggest on the Big Sur coast.”
Back in 1983, a slightly smaller slide closed Highway 1 for over a year.
The slide goes up 1,000 feet from the road deck and debris extends 250 feet beyond the shoreline. Cruz said the slide appears to be slightly larger than the 1983 slide near Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park that kept Highway 1 closed for 13 months. Although crews are doing soil assessment last week, the real work on the roadway can’t begin until the slide stabilizes. “We can’t really have climbers scaling it because it’s still moving,” Cruz said. “Until that movement ceases, we won’t be able to get up there and see it hands-on.”
