Yosemite Route Closed by Slide Reopens to Limited Use

by Michael Cabanatuan
San Francisco Chronicle - July 29, 2006

Sightseers and employees of Yosemite National Park who have been saddled with long, circuitous commutes since a rockslide closed Highway 140 three months ago will be able to use the route to make morning and evening trips in and out of the park beginning next week.

Caltrans will reopen the road Monday for escorted trips -- traveling only in one direction -- using an emergency bridge, a gravel-covered old railroad right-of-way and an old mountain road to skirt the Ferguson Rockslide, which has buried the riverside highway in 300 feet of rubble about 8 miles west of El Portal.

"This is basically designed for commuters going from Mariposa into Yosemite and back, to ease their burden,'' said Bob Boswell, a Caltrans spokesman. "But if a sightseer is staying in Mariposa at one of the motels or campgrounds, they can join the caravan and head right in. But they can't just show up in the middle of the day and take the detour.''

Construction crews are working on a second emergency bridge on the other side of the slide. When it's completed -- and Caltrans is aiming to get it done before Labor Day weekend -- it will cut the detour to a half-mile, Boswell said. When it opens, traffic lights will control one-way traffic across the detour.

As for a long-term fix, nobody knows what that might be, or when they'll be able to hazard a guess. The massive rockslide is still active, and geologists can't scale the rocks to examine the slide.

"We waiting for it to stop moving,'' said Boswell, "so we can figure out what we're going to do.''

Vehicles 28 feet or shorter will be escorted, convoy-style, by a pilot car along the 6-mile detour at 15 mph during scheduled times in the morning and evening. The highway will remain closed the rest of the day. The detours are closed to bicyclists and pedestrians.

A caravan for westbound traffic will leave from the Foresta Bridge, west of El Portal, at 5:30 a.m. All vehicles making the westbound trip must be in line by then. When the westbound trip is completed, an eastbound trip will depart from about 5 miles east of Briceburg at about 6 a.m. All eastbound travelers making the trip must be in line by 6 a.m.

In the evening, a westbound caravan will depart the Foresta Bridge at 6 p.m. Additional trips in alternating directions will take place until 7:30 p.m., when the final westbound evening caravan will depart the Foresta Bridge. All westbound traffic must be in line by 7:30 p.m.

For tourists bound for Yosemite, the closure has been a minor inconvenience, forcing them to take other highways north and south of 140. But for the hundreds of people who live at one end of the detour and work at the other, it's added up to two hours on winding mountain roads to make what was an hourlong trip.

Tourism officials in Mariposa County welcomed the limited opening as a small ray of light in what has been a dreary summer for businesses.

"It's just a real quick opening in the morning and a real quick opening in the evening,'' said Dorothy Kuhnel, executive director of the Mariposa County Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center. "But it's nice. It's going to make a little bit of a difference until they get the second bridge open.''