One of the world’s most famous road trips is back in business after back-to-back natural disasters made the “dream drive” along California Highway 1, between San Francisco and Los Angeles, impossible for more than a year. The classic US west-coast route, which traces some of the state’s most dramatic scenery, had been off-limits since February 2017.
That month, unprecedented heavy rains sank the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge, around 150 miles south of San Francisco, leaving an impassable gap in the two-lane highway. Just three months later, a massive landslide 35 miles south of the downed bridge, at Mud Creek, swept another chunk of the road into the sea.
The twin disasters didn’t just ruin the bucket-list trip for tourists. The community of Big Sur, a particularly scenic stretch of the route popular with Hollywood stars and tech-firm execs, was stranded between the two holes in the highway. Hotels and restaurants that relied on roadtrippers faced ruin, while schoolchildren were forced to hike a steep, hastily-dug forest trail to get to class.
“Our community has never been so tested,” said Kirk Gafill, owner of Nepenthe in Big Sur. His cliffside restaurant, which has served the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Henry Miller, typically fielded two-hour waits for a table. But with the road out in both directions, customers were less easy to come by.
Things have been looking up since October, however, when the bridge reopened and brought back daytrippers from the north. The landslide, though, was a trickier proposition. According to Susana Cruz of state transport department Caltrans, 3 million cubic metres of material had slipped into the sea, and the complex repair job cost $54 million.
Finally, 14 months after the slide, the highway at Mud Creek has reopened and the iconic drive can be put back on itineraries. Still, given the area’s precarious nature, locals and tourists might be well-advised to enjoy it while they can. A three-month-long forest fire closed businesses in Big Sur in 2016 and Highway 1, which teeters between mountains and ocean at the edge of the continent, is no stranger to landslides.
“The uncertainty of what lies ahead is what makes this such a magic and dynamic environment,” said Gafill.
