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Zitat

Mark your calendars for Big Sur’s grand re-opening for business from the north: Saturday night, Sept. 30, according to CalTrans’ latest projection.
That means it’ll be six months before Big Sur’s broken link — the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge, damaged by winter storms — is ready for tourists to make the classic coastal Highway 1 drive between Northern and Southern California.
Meanwhile, local businesses are frustrated that Caltrans has ruled out a temporary pedestrian suspension bridge.
“Caltrans seems insensitive to the financial and personal disaster south of the Pfeiffer Bridge,” said Gregory Hawthorne, owner of Big Sur’s Hawthorne Gallery and a partner in Post Ranch Inn. “There is available space for a pedestrian suspension bridge. This would help facilitate the construction of the new bridge by allowing workers to move from one side to the other. This would also accommodate a gurney for the injured, food for families and businesses could be moved by wagon or wheel barrel. Children could walk to a waiting school bus.”
A temporary bridge could also link tourists to hotels, restaurants and galleries, he said.
“This is not only a convenience; it is vital to the survival of this stranded community,” he said.
Pfeiffer Canyon has split Big Sur in half.

Zitat von »Bellagio«

Das ganze könnte auch eine sehr positive Seite haben: Wenn man den HWY 1 als Tagesausflug von Monterey bis zur Brücke macht und dann wieder zurückfährt, kann man eine Menge sehen. Und der Pfeiffer Beach sollte auch zugänglich sein. Weil die Durchgangstouris wegen der Sperrung fehlen, könnte das dann sogar eine sehr entspannte Tagestour werden. Überlege jetzt tatsächlich sogar, extra deswegen dieses Jahr die Ecke da noch einmal anzusteuern

Habe gerade ein Angebot gesehen für unter 400 € nach SFO im Juni

Zitat von »Bellagio«

Das ganze könnte auch eine sehr positive Seite haben: Wenn man den HWY 1 als Tagesausflug von Monterey bis zur Brücke macht und dann wieder zurückfährt, kann man eine Menge sehen. Und der Pfeiffer Beach sollte auch zugänglich sein. Weil die Durchgangstouris wegen der Sperrung fehlen, könnte das dann sogar eine sehr entspannte Tagestour werden. Überlege jetzt tatsächlich sogar, extra deswegen dieses Jahr die Ecke da noch einmal anzusteuern

Habe gerade ein Angebot gesehen für unter 400 € nach SFO im Juni

Zitat

By now, Big Sur’s severing from the outside world has unnerved even locals who are used to recurring plunges into isolation.
“It’s not a unique situation for us to be shut off,” said Kirk Gafill, the owner of Nepenthe, a cliffside restaurant that’s operated in Big Sur for nearly 70 years.
He recalled past mudslides on Highway 1 that had closed the Central Coast hideaway between Carmel and San Simeon for 10 weeks.
“But this one is so different because now we’re in week 20,” he said late last week. “The timeline is just epic.”
Landslides and a bridge collapse unleashed by fierce winter storms have kept much of Big Sur at a standstill.

Along the 25-mile stretch between the destroyed span at Pfeiffer Canyon to the north and a cascade of debris at Paul’s Slide, near Lucia, just a few business have stayed open to serve locals and visitors who hike in or arrive by helicopter.
But a small reprieve is expected any day. Transportation officials said Paul’s Slide was just about ready to fully reopen. That means motorists will be to get to the enclave using Nacimiento-Fergusson Road, a remote east-west route that cuts across the Santa Lucia Range.
Yet the timing on a return to normalcy remains uncertain.
Crews continue to work on two other painful blockages along Highway 1: the collapsed Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge and a major slide at Mud Creek roughly 35 miles to the south.
Officials said a new span would be in place by the end of September, resuming easy access for visitors from points north.

The Mud Creek timeline is less clear. The May 20 landslide was so large that it reshaped the coastline. Jim Shivers, a spokesman for Caltrans, said that even a ballpark estimate for reopening was impossible.
“It’s not as simple as pushing the debris over the side into the ocean. There are environmental regulations we have to adhere to,” he said. “At this point we don’t know what we plan to do.”
In the meantime, with summer upon us, the few visitors have been seeing a rare crowd-free version of Big Sur.
Anthony Albert, from Oakland, lugged his bike along a half-mile hiking trail that circumvents the downed Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge and cycled all the way to Paul’s Slide and back.
In roughly eight hours of riding, he said, he encountered maybe 10 people.
“It was surreal,” said Mr. Albert, 27. “It felt like I was in the afterlife, like reliving a past experience with nobody around.”

Zitat von »Andree«

Das haben wir im September auch vor.

Zitat von »jof«

Wo finde ich denn im Netz, wie ich jetzt genau fahren muss ? Wir fliegen morgen von Seattle nach Francisco und übernehmen dort unseren mietwagen, um nächste Woche nach L. A. weiterzufahren, eigentlich die Küste entlang ...

Zitat

The picturesque highway from San Francisco to LA was battered by floods last winter, but an emergency walking route for residents is now a tempting trail for hikers too

With the only road in or out cut off, residents have been stranded in the middle, and the only tourists getting in were the mega-rich who could afford a helicopter. But Big Sur has finally found a way to reopen to everyone – if you don’t mind a bit of adventure.
To help those marooned, an emergency hiking trail was dug into surrounding woodland so residents could at least buy groceries; unauthorised hikers were subject to fines. But since 1 July, it’s also been a way for tourists to get in. The trail’s purpose has expanded to include helping the economy, which is losing thousands of dollars every day.

Zitat

California officials say they’ll build a road over a massive Central Coast landslide that closed the scenic coastal highway leading to Big Sur.
The Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that spanning the Mud Creek site will be a faster and cheaper way of reopening Highway 1, compared to boring a tunnel or sidestepping the slide area.
A quarter-mile of Highway 1 was buried in May when more than 1 million tons of rock and earth slipped down a slope saturated by winter storms.
Caltrans says the replacement road will be realigned across the slide and buttressed with embankments, berms, rocks and other supports.
Caltrans has said it may take a year to reopen the route. A timetable and cost estimate will be announced later this month.

Zitat

After flying his family nearly halfway around the world to vacation in California, Tokyo resident Iain Ferguson wasn’t about to miss Big Sur’s renowned beauty — even if a lot of it is cut off by landslides.
So one morning last week, Ferguson and his wife, Chee, trudged with their young children, Riki and Hana, up one of the state’s newest and least expected trails, a steep half-mile footpath that skirts around a washed-out bridge on Highway 1.
The forested trek provides a singular, if backbreaking, link between Big Sur’s accessible north and its largely inaccessible south, where hotels, restaurants and gift shops that usually celebrate their isolation on the ruggedly scenic coast are now struggling to deal with too much of a good thing.
The trail was built quickly in March as a lifeline for residents stranded when the bridge failed. But since the state park system opened the path to the public last month, the number of locals hauling in food or batteries has been eclipsed by a wave of camera-carrying tourists seeking a taste of the seclusion.