Daydreaming about a road trip to L.A. along California’s beautiful Pacific Coast Highway? After more than two and a half years of closures, it should be possible once again by March. Caltrans announced Monday that Regent’s Slide, the massive movement of earth that buried a 6.8-mile section of the road south of Big Sur in February 2024, will finally be cleared.
The agency said crews have stabilized the roadbed by installing several thousand dowels deep into the earth, allowing repair work to proceed. They’ve since removed more than 300,000 cubic yards of material from the site, with 250,000 more yet to be cleared. (For context, that total amount would fill more than three Salesforce Towers.) When completed, the highway will look much as it did before, only slightly inland of its former route.
Caltrans noted that the March 2026 reopening could be pushed back if more movement occurs at Regent’s Slide or if severe winter storms force the closure of another section of the road. The total cost of the repair work is $82 million.
“This is our best estimate, with all the caveats,” Caltrans District 5 spokesperson Kevin Drabinski said, noting that the terrain is steep and at a relatively high elevation, 450 feet above sea level.
Further, a secondary slide in August 2024 forced crews to retreat and restart their work from a different angle. “It was always going to be a challenging repair,” Drabinski said.
Slides have plagued the scenic highway up and down the Central Coast in recent years, including a five-month period in 2017 when Big Sur was cut off from both directions. It has not been possible to drive the entire length of PCH since Jan. 15, 2023, when Paul’s Slide closed a two-mile section for more than a year.
Yet another dramatic incident occurred in March 2024, when storms caused part of the highway to erode, forcing one-way traffic restrictions and extensive delays for anyone hoping to visit Point Sur Historic State Park and California’s “mini-Yosemite,” Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. That reconstruction project was completed this summer.