After a brief period of full closure earlier today, Highway 299 near Berry Summit is now open and accepting your traffic. Caltrans decision to close the road was due to the presence of dangerous boulders in the area, boulders they decided needed to be blown to rock heaven.

We’ll let LoCO Caltrans liason Coney give y’all the deets on today’s blasting operations.

Video from this morning’s rock blasting operations on Route 299 at postmile 30, just east of Berry Summit. We were able to set up three cameras to catch the detonation for your enjoyment!

We always fully close the highway during blasting operations for the public’s safety, but we try to keep delays to a minimum. Normally we allow ourselves 30 minutes of full closure time, but we were able to close the highway down, blast the rocks, and clear the debris in just over 14 minutes today. Thanks for your patience while we worked to make things safer!

And now, a kaboom. 

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UPDATE, 5:30 p.m.: After this post went up, Caltrans PIO Eli Rohl felt that our Facebook comment on this post, “This kaboom and its filming were paid for with your tax dollars, SO ENJOY IT,” needed some clarifying. We present the following enlightening exchange in case you were confused.