Caltrans says repeated winter storms are delaying efforts to reopen State Route 299, with officials adding another week to the current timeline.
“When we are able to work, that’s going really well,” said Trisha Coder, a Caltrans spokeswoman. “We just can’t be out there in a hard rain because of the instability of that hillside.”
The hillside, about 30 miles west of Weaverville, has been problematic, repeatedly spawning landslides. The most recent, Dec. 12, buried the roadway beneath one hundred thousand tons of rock.
Coder said a temporary detour around the slide is about half completed.
“We have crews working out there as weather allows, they are doing double shifts right now,” she said.
Contractors and the agency now believes they’ll be able to re-open the severed highway sometime between Jan. 15 and Jan. 21 with the inevitable one-way traffic controls.