Category: Uncategorized

Yesterday, April 30, 2019, at 10:10 am, a small, magnitude 3.4 earthquake rocked the seafloor 25 kilometers northwest of San Simeon. That’s just offshore from where the Monterey/San Luis Obispo County line meets the coast; between Salmon Creek and Ragged Point. Local media reported it took place on the San Simeon Fault.

In other words, the quake took place immediately adjacent to some of the most unstable and landslide prone slopes in Big Sur. It was fortunate that this quake was so small, because larger – much larger – earthquakes are distinctly possible along the Big Sur coast.

The epicenter of yesterday’s earthquake was just off this segment of the southern Big Sur coast. The cattle grazing in Kozy Kove Meadow make a peaceful, bucolic scene, but it’s worth remembering that the flat is, in fact, the top of an enormous pile of rubble; the remnants of a massive landslide…

Punta Barro: Big Sur’s newest geographical feature (photo credit: Rock Knocker)

The Santa Lucia Mountains are very young. At just 5 million years old, they are still in the process of being born – punching upward out of the Pacific faster than the forces of wind, waves, rain, and gravity can wear them down. Their steep, unstable seaward wall, rising to over 5,000 feet at Cone Peak, is constantly eroding, sliding and collapsing into the sea.

This natural process has been greatly accelerated since the 1930s, when the construction of Highway One undercut and activated treacherous slopes and old slide zones from one end of Big Sur to the other.

Mud Creek is one of those treacherous slopes. It’s not even really a creek; just a highly saturated mountainside that constantly oozes mud and water and tends to creep or slide downhill during the rainy season. It’s been a…

The Highway has been mostly closed for over a month now, but sooner or later it will be business as usual again.

There’s been concern expressed recently about the safety of Highway One through Big Sur. Not concern about the inherent danger of a narrow, twisting road perched on the side of a cliff, but concern about new dangers created by congestion and overcrowding.

As anyone who lives, works or spends time in Big Sur knows, the Highway has gotten very, very crowded over the past five years or so. Why has the number of visitors increased so drastically? Is it social media? Advertising? Shifting dynamics of domestic and international tourism? No one seems to know for sure.

What people do know is that they’re frustrated with the traffic and crowds.

Traffic now routinely comes to a standstill at hotspots like Pt. Lobos, Bixby Bridge and Julia Pfeiffer Burns. Tourists…

And this beauty just posted by Kyle Evans. Crane is almost assembled.

Photos by Heather Foster. The first one is from yesterday, Thursday, the second is from early this am. Thank you, Heather.

From Cal Trans through KSBW:

Piece by piece, crews put together a 250 ton crane that will be used to knock down the collapsed Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge in Big Sur.

“The crane consisted of eleven loads coming from various parts of the state and it’s essentially being put together here on site,” said David Galarza with Caltrans. “It’s quite a task. They’re using a crane to put a crane together.”
After everything is assembled crews will attach a 6000 pound wrecking ball to the crane and use it to bring down the bridge.
“He’ll take it to a certain distance above the bridge deck and essentially drop it on there,” said Galarza. “Do that repeatedly and it…