​California’s restless new stretch of beachfront property will soon have a road.

• Second tragedy off Big Sur coast when three people swept into ocean, one still missing
• More housing on the California coast? Changes at this powerful agency signal a pro-building shift
• Highway 1: One last closure as Rocky Creek project nearly finished
• Hwy. 1 overnight closure at Rocky Creek marks start of demobilization
• Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur nominated for prestigious new Michelin award

There also are plans to start excavation on the southern side of now-buried Highway 1, building a ledge for construction equipment.

“We’re trying to find stable ground. We are pioneering a road,” said John Madonna of John Madonna Construction Co. of San Luis Obispo, which will conduct the Caltrans project to open the Big Sur stretch of road.

The radar system will be installed atop what’s been dubbed “Pyramid Rock,” a barn-sized boulder at the edge of the new apron of coastline, the size of 10 football fields.

It can detect mere inches of movement on the restless mountain and quickly transmits its data by satellite to experts at IDS GeoRadar in Colorado for analysis, Madonna said.

The tool, called IBIS (Image By Interferometric Survey), relies on radar interferometer. A signal is emitted, travels over a distance, contacts a surface, then is received and noted. Software analyzes the results, so small displacements of soil are monitored.

If the radar senses sudden motion, it sounds an alarm.

The system is used not only to remotely monitor landslides like Mud Creek, but also glaciers and open pit mines, according to John S. Metzger, business development technologist at IDS.

Get top headlines in your inbox every afternoon.
Sign up for the free PM Report newsletter.

Madonna will rely on the radar to protect his crews; Caltrans will use it to plan route construction.

While there is an existing radar system near the mountain, its angle is very oblique and can’t evaluate the entire terrain, he said. 

After this winter’s fierce rains, Madonna and a team of experts with Caltrans and the U.S. Geological Survey watched and worried over five distinct slides on the steep 1,100 foot mountain.

Noticing movement, they pulled workers off the main section of the site on May 17. Then, two days later on May 19, they stopped work on the edges of the site, as well.

It undoubtedly saved lives: On the night of Saturday, May 20, three of the five slides suffered a dramatic collapse, dropping 2 million cubic meters of earth, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That’s 200,000 dump trucks filled with rubble.

While much of the Mud Creek mountain now seems quiet, two weak spots remain at risk of sliding: one on the north, the other on the south.

The greatest concern is a steep and unstable northern flank of the mountain range. It is not yet considered safe for construction.

“The north end of the slide is still hanging up there,” Madonna said. “Otherwise, most of the energy of this thing has dissipated.”

He also monitors the mountain from the air, photographing it from his Piper Saratoga plane.

Highway 1, if it still exists, is buried under 80 feet of dirt and rock at its deepest point. That’s a formidable excavation project. It may take Madonna more than a year to reopen the road.

As Madonna looks in awe at the dramatic shifting landscape that has buried an iconic coastal highway, he thinks of the words of his father — the late real estate developer and entrepreneur Alex Madonna, who owned and operated the iconic fantasy-themed Madonna Inn.

“My father always said about the California coast: ‘They don’t make any more of it,’ ” he said. “But here it is.”