Massive Yosemite Rockslide Upends Neighbors’ Lives

Primitivo Garcia’s commute to the hotel restaurant he manages at Yosemite National Park’s western edge was a scenic 20-minute drive through the narrow, winding canyon of the Merced River.

That was before a massive rockslide covered state Highway 140, a main route into Yosemite, with 3 million cubic yards of dirt and rocks.

Now, the journey from Garcia’s home in the town of Midpines to Cedar Lodge takes him nearly 100 miles through a different gate and into Yosemite Valley, then back down 140 to El Portal -- a round trip of five to six hours on tortuous mountain roads and through the traffic-choked park.

“I’m going to do this until my car dies,” said Garcia, who estimates he’s spending almost $200 a week to get to work. The cheapest gas in El Portal was selling for $4.02 a gallon last week.

Because there are other routes into Yosemite, the still-active rockslide, which began April 29, hasn’t thinned the throngs of summer visitors who flock to one of the nation’s most popular national parks. But the blockage is hurting businesses in and around the park that have been cut off from their employees and supply chain.

The road closure is devastating to towns like Mariposa, which lies outside Yosemite and relies on park visitors for its livelihood. It’s a four-hour round trip to the park by alternate routes.

Park employee Lloyd Sheetz and his wife, Linda Niles-Sheetz, work in El Portal, where their two daughters attend elementary school. They live in Mariposa, on the other side of the slide. They wake up the girls at 5 a.m. for a day that includes five hours of driving, adding about 1,000 miles a week to their Nissan Sentra.

“We’re just exhausted,” Niles-Sheetz said. “The cost is incredible.... I don’t know what we can take.”

Geologists are studying the crumbling hillside, trying to determine what made it start moving. Heavy rainfall in April may be to blame, but it’s difficult to reach conclusions because the slide remains too active to install monitoring equipment.

“This is a prehistoric slide,” said Debbie Santiago, spokeswoman for the team of 12 federal, state and local agencies working on the slide. As she spoke, rocks continued to tumble down the slope. The shower seems to be slowing down, but relief doesn’t seem possible anytime soon, she said.

“Rocks as big as Volkswagens are coming down whenever they want to,” Santiago said. “It’s frustrating for us, and for the communities around here, but this could last another hour, it could last months, or years. It’s not good, but it’s the truth.”

Tourists don’t seem to mind the hassle. Highway 140, which usually carries about a third of park visitors, was closed for most of May. But park statistics show there were nearly 18% more visitors in May than during the same month last year.

Thomas Lyman recently drove from Los Angeles to spend two nights in the park. Taking the southern route along state Highway 41 took a half an hour longer, but seeing Yosemite’s waterfalls in all their raging glory made it worth the drive.

But officials in Mariposa County, which includes Yosemite Valley and Highway 140 as it climbs through the foothills and into the Sierra Nevada, estimate businesses there have lost about $4 million in tourism dollars.

If the blockage lasts through the summer, which appears likely, that number could escalate to $14.5 million.

“Many of these businesses make maybe half their annual income in these summer months,” said Mike Coffield, the county’s administrative officer. “It’s just devastating.”

There are also about 400 park and concessionaire employees who live beyond the slide and work inside the park. Children are falling asleep in cars and buses during the hours-long trip to school, parents are driving long hours to buy groceries, and everyone is cutting expenses to pay for gas.

Adrienne Freeman, a spokeswoman for the park, lives in Midpines. The four- to five-hour commute is exhausting, she said, but this is the cost of living so close to untamed wilderness.

“It’s tiring, but I’m fortunate to work here,” she said, gesturing toward the thundering Bridal Veil Falls, which was spraying tourists 100 yards away. “I’m not in control of the environment here. I enjoy that.”

Park officials say they are doing what they can to help employees affected by the slide, opening vacant housing to those who need a place to stay during the week, and allowing others to use a trailer park that was being phased out, said ranger Scott Gediman.

Delaware North Cos., which manages restaurants and lodging in the park, is running a shuttle for workers that starts before dawn and ends after midnight.

Maintaining a stable workforce is essential at the start of the park’s busiest season, Gediman said.

But business owners like Douglas Shaw, who owns the Yosemite Bug, a cluster of cabins and a hostel that’s normally within 40 minutes of the park, don’t know how long they can hang on. His business has dropped 60% since the slide. In one month, he lost $50,000 and had to lay off a third of his employees.

He put a house up for sale to generate some capital but has had no takers; no one is driving the highway and other locals are strapped for cash.

“I’m very afraid,” he said. “If this keeps on for a year, I don’t know what will happen to us.”