Highway 41 closed near Yosemite National Park entrance
OAKHURST, California (KFSN) -- On the way up to Yosemite, there are several signs in Oakhurst warning drivers that highway 41 from Fish Camp to the national park is closed.
It is all because of a shoulder on the road that started washing out two weeks ago. Constant steady made the conditions worse, causing the hole in roadway Tuesday to grow in width by five feet.
"At that point our engineers, our safety staff, we decided to fully close the roadway in both directions to all traffic," said Cory Burkarth, Caltrans.
Frustrating tourists like Simon Staiger who traveled from Germany to visit the park.
"We saw the sign before but we were thinking it would get better and would go further, but then we had to turn around one in half hours to two hours later."
The emergency pit repair work is going to cost at least a million dollars and will take a couple weeks to fix.
Bad timing for a gift shop in Oakhurst; the owner, Natashia Burrell, said a decent portion of their sales comes from tourists.
"It is kind of sad to hear that we'll be losing a little bit of traffic but it will be okay."
But one restaurant down the road says it is good timing for them since the winter season is usually pretty slow.
"March 10 they say it would be closed till, right after that is when we're supposed to get hit with our spring and summer," said Christian Guizar, Crab Cakes.
Until then, folks heading up to Yosemite from Fresno will have to take Highway 41 to Oakhurst, then Highway 49 to Highway 140 in Mariposa.
Some of the hotels there say they have not had any cancellations yet, but with Highway 41 being closed for quite some time, they are expecting to get them.
