A seemingly cursed Big Sur hiking trail finally reopens. But for how long?

Even successful picturesque California, fewer landscapes are arsenic stunning — oregon arsenic fragile — arsenic Big Sur. The changeless storms and seismic enactment that forged its melodramatic cliffs and canyons besides marque its infrastructure a nightmare to maintain.

The superior roadworthy done the region, world-famous Highway 1, which clings to cliffs precocious supra the Pacific Ocean successful postcard-worthy fashion, is astir perpetually closed by landslides, isolating communities and stranding weary travelers.

Local hiking trails don’t fare overmuch better.

The Pfeiffer Falls Trail intersects with the Valley View Trail, a loop that provides views of the authorities parkland retired to the Pacific.

(Lisa Winner / Save the Redwoods League)

So, arsenic if they had conscionable taken a heavy enactment and crossed their fingers, California State Parks officials announced this week that 1 of the region’s astir beloved hikes, the Pfeiffer Falls Trail, volition yet reopen aft a towering redwood collapsed successful a 2023 storm, taking retired its signature pedestrian bridge.

The trail, a 0.75-mile stroll that cuts done Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park and ends with a stunning presumption of a 60-foot waterfall, is 1 of the premier draws for a parkland that attracts astir 750,000 radical each year.

For specified a abbreviated walk, the way has a agelong history.

In 2008, the 162,818-acre Basin Complex occurrence devastated overmuch of the way and surrounding forest. It took $2 cardinal and astir 13 years to implicit a renovation task — removing aged and damaged concrete, rerouting the way and constructing the span — to yet reopen the hike successful June 2021.

About 18-months later, a tempest arrived and a towering redwood crashed the party.

The Pfeiffer Falls Bridge successful 2023 aft a elephantine redwood fell connected portion of the structure, closing the trail.

(California State Parks)

The histrion splintered a 15-foot conception of the bridge. Crews salvaged overmuch of the archetypal operation but replaced the damaged conception with fiber-reinforced polymer successful the anticipation of making the span stronger and much resilient to its unforgiving environment.

“It’s unfortunate that the way had to adjacent truthful soon aft our archetypal renovations,” said Matthew Gomez, elder parks programme manager for Save the Redwoods League, a nonprofit that helped with the repairs. “But our adjacent concern with California State Parks allowed america to rebuild the span amended than ever.”