State Highway 6 remains closed after torrential rain on Friday night aggravated the 12-year-old slip beneath the road.
Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency says a permanent fix would take years and is likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Central South Island system manager Mark Pinner said the Knights Point site was among the most difficult sites to manage on the country’s road network given the rockfall risk above the road, slip risk below and complex underlying geology.
There was a lot of work still to be done to determine if there was a safe, resilient route inland, which was likely to cost "hundreds of millions of dollars".
"Just three weeks ago we signed off on a business case to actually look at an option as to how we can indeed make the road secure from Knights Point all the way through to Ship Creek, what those options are, what it would cost, what the timeline is so we can give the community some confidence."
An NZTA spokeswoman said the scaling crew had only had one full day — yesterday — on site.
"Their work is incredibly physical and also requires a lot of decisions and actions [involving explosives, compressors, machinery] which affect the whole team and things happening near the site. This is not a work situation where you can add more people and make it happen faster, or drive people to work longer hours and things will happen faster."
A large rockfall, releasing several thousand cubic metres of material, was brought down above the road on Friday night. Access to the site was hampered due to other slips closing the road north and south, and cloud cover kept helicopters grounded.
A further rockfall occurred on Sunday night. An inspection on Monday also identified that the rockfalls destabilised the rift feature in between, which meant there was significantly more scaling work that needed to be tackled before teams could begin clearing rockfall from the catch-pit.
There was still a lot of work to do to make the bluff safe before the road reopened, Mr Pinner said.
The ground was still saturated and they would take time to understand how the site might react to more rain today.
Gerry McSweeney, from the Lake Moeraki Wilderness Lodge, said Haast was "dead".
"The whole flow of people has stopped."
Development West Coast destination and tourism manager Andrew Aitken suggested people from northern Westland and surrounding areas head to the glaciers this weekend. The forecast is for fine weather.
The next update concerning the road is at 5pm on Sunday. — Greymouth Star
