A portion of Angeles Crest Highway was severely damaged during Southern California’s storms last December. The highway had just fully reopened in August 2025 after a yearslong closure.
A portion of Angeles Crest Highway was severely damaged during Southern California’s storms last December. The highway had just fully reopened in August 2025 after a yearslong closure.
Last August, the full length of Angeles Crest Highway reopened for the first time in years, allowing hikers, campers, classic car drivers and others full access to the east-west road that cuts through the center of Angeles National Forest. When not closed for repairs, the famous mountain road takes travelers from just north of Los Angeles all the way out to the Cajon Pass, which connects California’s high desert with the Inland Empire below.
It took years for Caltrans to repair damage from the “relentless storms” in the winter of 2022-2023, which collapsed parts of the roadway and caused rockslides, according to Caltrans.
But Angelenos didn’t have much time to enjoy the entire expanse of the national forest’s more than 700,000 acres, much of which is connected directly to the troubled road. Just a few months later, another winter storm rolled in, and a large chunk in the middle of the 66-mile mountain highway closed again. “ANGELES CREST HIGHWAY IS DESTROYED,” wrote one Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department official on Instagram at the time.
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FILE: A car makes its way along Angeles Crest Highway in California.
FILE: A car makes its way along Angeles Crest Highway in California.
Ten months later, the highway remains closed, with no set reopening date in sight. And forecasts for this year’s El Niño, which is expected to be historically strong, suggest that Angeles Crest Highway is about to get hit with winter weather that exceeds the types of prior storms that have knocked out the highway for years at a time.
Repairing the damage from last year’s storms is already expected to take until at least 2028 — if this year’s El Niño doesn’t end up compounding the damage and adding to the construction workload. Heavy rains could wash out or undermine existing work, or rockfall could damage already aging roadways. Even without further damage, the repairs themselves could be slowed by access issues, should hillside erosion or heavy snow block pathways for workers and heavy equipment.
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All in all, the full length of Angeles Crest Highway has been open for only a total of around four months over the past four years and will likely remain closed at least through the end of next year.
The extended on-and-off closures of Angeles Crest Highway have made the full length of the road less of a reliable route for forest visitors and more of a novelty, and driving the full 66 miles has become a rare feat in itself. It also raises bigger questions about how long Caltrans can keep up with yearslong, multimillion-dollar construction projects after major winter storms, just for the damage to almost immediately repeat itself.
A portion of Angeles Crest Highway was severely damaged during Southern California’s storms last December. The highway had just fully reopened in August 2025 after a yearslong closure.
A portion of Angeles Crest Highway was severely damaged during Southern California’s storms last December. The highway had just fully reopened in August 2025 after a yearslong closure.
Angeles Crest Highway isn’t alone. Many of California’s most scenic roadways were built through mountain passes, right along the ocean and on the edge of coastal cliffs at a time long before planners were thinking about climate change, which has made extreme weather like major winter storms and events like wildfires more frequent and intense. In Malibu, Pacific Coast Highway, already threatened by erosion, has seen those conditions worsen in the footprint of the Palisades Fire. Farther north, the stretch of Highway 1 along the Central Coast and Northern California has also been plagued by flooding and debris during major storms.
Angeles Crest Highway, meanwhile, has been in a race against nature and time since its inception. The highway runs straight through the San Gabriel Mountains (which also have a rare east-west orientation), and the mountain range has long been described as dynamic and unpredictable, with constant cycles of fires, floods and debris flows.
Aerial view of Angeles Crest Highway in Los Angles.
Aerial view of Angeles Crest Highway in Los Angles.
The highway was built between 1929 and 1956, and “every yard of the way” was blasted with dynamite, one construction superintendent told the Los Angeles Mirror-News in 1956. A report that year from California Highways and Public Works magazine noted that the highway is built “along steep side hills and through ridges where slopes are acted upon by wind, rain and snow,” and that rock plows had to patrol constantly during heavy rain.
Currently, the closed section of roadway starts a few miles west of Big Pines and the Mountain High resort, passes Angeles Crest Highway’s junction with the long-closed stretch of Highway 39, and ends about 3 miles east of Newcomb’s Ranch, a currently shuttered historic roadhouse. The closed stretch of road includes the route to Mount Waterman, a historic ski area that’s been closed in recent years but came into new ownership in 2024 under a company hoping to turn it into a private club for the rich.
Construction is ongoing on the long list of $16.8 million worth of repairs needed to reopen the highway, according to Caltrans spokesperson Eric Menjivar, but the department does not have a potential reopening date set.
“Angeles Crest Highway has a dedicated maintenance crew that does preventative maintenance work, responds to slides, and plows snow through winter and spring on a yearly basis. Over the past few years, the highway has experienced landslides, washouts, and damage of roadway sections due to record-breaking rain and snow storms. While these storms have been a challenge to keep the highway open, the department, in coordination with our geotechnical unit, has done slope protection, rock netting, and improved drainage at several locations,” Menjivar wrote in an email to SFGATE.
A portion of Angeles Crest Highway was severely damaged during Southern California’s storms last December. The highway had just fully reopened in August 2025 after a yearslong closure.
A portion of Angeles Crest Highway was severely damaged during Southern California’s storms last December. The highway had just fully reopened in August 2025 after a yearslong closure.
Contractors are working on erosion control measures to protect the highway ahead of this winter’s storms, according to Menjivar. They’re also setting up sandbags, K-rail and slope protection in erosion-prone areas and are pre-staging equipment like excavators and dump trucks.
And while there’s no set reopening date yet, Caltrans does have estimates for when it expects to complete certain construction milestones.
Construction on the easternmost 3 miles of closed roadway is 80% complete, with an anticipated completion date in the winter of 2026-2027. For the middle 11 miles of closed road, construction is 40% complete, with an anticipated completion in summer 2027.
And for the westernmost 10 miles of closed highway, construction is 20% complete, with an anticipated completion date of winter 2027-2028.
Of course, whether those estimates hold after this winter’s El Niño storms remains to be seen — and in any case, Angelenos probably shouldn’t count on driving the length of Angeles Crest Highway for at least another year or two.