Highway 1 at Regent's Slide will remain closed for 2024.

The Big Sur coastline continues to crack and crumble, causing delays in the reopening of Highway 1 at Regent’s Slide, Caltrans announced in a statement on Sept. 27.

The 6.8-mile segment of Highway 1, spanning from one mile south of the Esalen Institute to two miles north of Lucia, will remain closed at least through the rest of the year.

“One of the challenges when you're doing a top-down landslide removal, you are operating in the presence of existing, active and dormant landslides,” says Caltrans Public Information Officer Kevin Drabinski. “Almost overnight in early August, we saw ground cracking below where we were working, off to the side, and above it.”

The Regent’s Slide occurred on Feb. 9, 2024 at Post Mile 27.8, just north of the ongoing construction at Paul's Slide. The highway closure at Paul's Slide, which reopened in June of this year, originally occurred after the atmospheric rivers hit the area in January 2023, causing a closure of about 4.3 miles of Highway 1.

Caltrans workers are monitoring the area daily, using drone imaging and surveying to detect any signs of land movement or cracking. Since August, they've discovered that land movement and cracking are occurring within a roughly 500-foot-wide circle around the excavation site.

“It’s difficult to compare slides, because every single one of them has its own particular traits and personality,” Drabinski says. “The Regent’s Slide is challenging because of the height and steepness of the slope and the fact that other existing and dormant slides, in and around that area, are honeycombed throughout that part of the Santa Lucia Mountains.” 

With winter quickly approaching, Drabinski says they are working with a contractor to prepare the site to withstand the rainy season and the instability it may bring.

For now, travelers from the north can still see the historic bridges and waterfalls, and travelers from the south can access popular areas like Ragged Point and the Lucia community. But through-traffic in either direction, southbound or northbound, is not available on Highway 1 through Big Sur. 

But for the immediate future, it is closed, and illegal to try and cross it.

“There's no way you can get across it. If you're sitting in the roadway, it's 100 feet high that is blocking you,” Drabinski says.