_{Thumbnail photo courtesy of Joe Gillespie}

South Fork Road is closed until further notice due to a rockslide between the Rock Creek and Boulder Creek areas that occurred early Friday morning.

Joe Gillespie, who has lived in the Rock Creek subdivision for about 36 years, said the slide occurred at about 5 a.m. It’s less than half a mile upstream from his home and while his access to U.S. 199 is still open, he said Boulder Creek and Big Flat residents will need to take French Hill Road to get to the highway.

“That’s like an hour and a half detour,” Gillespie said of the county maintained road that drops down into Gasquet. “They do a pretty good job of keeping it open in case of situations like these.”

According to a Del Norte County news release, the rock slide occurred near milepost marker 8.0 on South Fork Road. Road and Engineering Division staff are currently evaluating the slide and assessing road conditions. 

Gillespie, who heard the slide, said it occurred near a “very steep large cliff” just before the bridge heading into the Boulder Creek area. The area has blown out further up the mountain before, he said.

Now, the boulders littering the road are “practically small house size,” Gillespie said. He said it will probably take explosives to clear at least two of them off the road.

Gillespie, a retired science teacher from Crescent Elk Middle School, said that though the rock slide may look stable for now, it should still be considered dangerous. He said he had been anticipating the area to slide “for as long as I’ve lived up here.”

“What will happen over time is what they call frost wedging where, because the rock is fractured, water will seep down into the cracks of the rock,” Gillespie said. “With heavy freezing — which we’re lucky we don’t have much of — eventually these rocks get wedged apart and you could end up with a natural landslide again. But, who knows, it might hold up for another 30 years.”

For more information about the rock slide, call the Del Norte County Community Development Department between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday at (707) 464-7229.