UPDATE: Big Sur landmark restaurants among those caught in landslide crisis.

This article, which originally appeared Feb. 15, has been updated with segments of a story by Nic Coury appearing in print Thursday, Feb. 23.

Nearly 8 inches of rain dumped on already-saturated Big Sur coast from Feb. 18-22, and a fractured support column under Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge on Highway 1 in Big Sur continued sliding downhill.

“The bridge is beyond repair,” says Caltrans spokeswoman Susana Cruz, based on a Feb. 21 structural assessment. “The time frame for a new bridge is unknown. We have a couple of days of dry weather, which will help us.”

Numerous cracks were found in the support column on Feb. 11 as a mudslide under the bridge shifted the concrete base.

Cruz estimates a replacement could take upward of a year—a long isolation for some 435 residents who live south of Pfeiffer Canyon, as well as dozens of restaurants and businesses. Access is also closed on Highway 1 to the south of Big Sur due to slides, and Nacimiento-Fergusson Road—the only east-west paved access—is also currently closed.

“The county is working on options,” Monterey County spokesperson Maia Carroll says. The county’s goal is to do a resupply within a couple of weeks.

So far, a medevac helicopter has been set up to transport Big Sur patients in case of medical emergencies.

The first piece appears here:

If one wanted to have, say, a nice craft beer and a taco at Big Sur Taphouse, or a famous ambrosia burger and South Coast margarita at Nepenthe, or some Black River caviar at Sierra Mar, they'd have to really want it.

(And, in the case of the caviar, they'd have to have $225.)

That's because of two major road closures that have reduced Big Sur proper to a coastal island-of-sorts.

First Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge was cut off to vehicle traffic earlier this week because of cracks in its support columns.

Then Nacimiento-Fergusson Road south of Lucia was shut down because the road is sliding down the cliff.

Don't worry—99.9 percent of Big Sur types know what they signed up for when they moved there or started work down south. At least if they didn't, they know now. 

But to get that food and drink, one would have to park on the north side of the blockade and hike a mile to reach Big Sur Taphouse. (There is beer flowing, and food sizzling, because Taphouse staff can cart supplies along that corridor via dolly, wheelbarrow and backpack.)

(Or at least that is the status quo. From 10am-1pm cars can cross the bridge one-by-one, under Caltrans supervision.)

If they had a friend with a car on the other side—or really wanted to hike—they could make it to Nepenthe.

Only there's no food being served there.

Nepenthe is closing operations until at least March 1 to give employees a chance to regroup and find steadier work elsewhere while its family hunkers down without the ability to move propane or trash, let alone edible and potable supplies.

"When we can't get food or drink or people here safely," Manager Alicia Hahn-Peterson says, leaving the thought to trail off.

March 1, considering oncoming storms, dynamic slide conditions and who-knows-what-else-on-the-way, seems optimistic. Certain experts arriving to consult on the safety of various roads and bridges aren't expected until next week.

Most all of the businesses on the South Coast—and a lot of people—are hurting financially from two months essentially dark from the Soberanes Fire caused by an illegal campfire. 

Hahn, like the wider Nepenthe family, is most concerned for her employees, and wants to alert all Peninsula restaurants in need of skilled, well-trained front and back of the house staff so that she can connect them.

Her email is ahahn@nepenthebigsur.com

"We're prioritizing our employees," she says. "It's my first year as a manager and it's been intense—the fire, then this."

"The family has had a plan for this sort of this thing," she adds. "Other people are doing some soul-searching, [asking,] "If I'm on this side am I prepared to stay?"

Nepenthe's place at the heart of Big Sur resilience—and community—was a major theme of the cover story I wrote on its 60th anniversary, "It’s a Sur Thing: Nepenthe still swinging as it turns 60," as this passage attests:

When a split-second of silver in the summer sky and years of golden-brown on the ground collaborated to stoke a fire hungry enough to gnaw up more than 160,000 acres – and to chew within 30 feet of Highway 1, right up the road from the old restaurant – it wasn’t Nepenthe’s first folk dance with disaster.

El Niño (1983 edition) shoved mudslides down the Santa Lucia range and onto Highway 1, closing it in both directions for 10 weeks (and south access for months longer). Its ’98 reincarnation did much of the same. Meanwhile, Kirk Complex, Rat Gorda Complex and Marble Cone fires sufficiently rattled Big Sur’s soul (and infrastructure).

The chaos brought them closer, which isn’t easy. Nepenthe and Big Sur have been indecipherable since Bill Fassett coined its early motto when ambrosia burgers were still 60 cents: “In Big Sur it’s Nepenthe – ask anybody.”

“It’s hard to imagine Big Sur without it,” says Stan Russell, Big Sur Chamber of Commerce executive director. “It’s such a critical part of the heart of Big Sur. If it didn’t exist it would have to be invented.”

“A rare structure, a rare family, a rare approach in this rare place,” Big Sur Lodge guide Jack Ellwanger says. “They’re really at the heartbeat of the coast.”