Crews manning a small armada of bulldozers and dump trucks have cleared most of the Southern California roads and highways blocked last week by mudslides unleashed by a freakish deluge.

Interstate 5, the state's principal north-south highway, was reopened first, on Friday afternoon, after workers freed hundreds of stranded vehicles on the Grapevine, in the Tehachapi Mountains between Los Angeles and Bakersfield.

Over the weekend, crews cleaned up blocked roads near the communities of Lake Hughes and Lake Elizabeth, in the hills northwest of the Antelope Valley city of Palmdale.

A more serious blockage occurred on Highway 58, the main route between Bakersfield and the Mojave Desert crossroads of Barstow. More than 100 cars and scores of semis were trapped by mudslides cascading onto the roadway.

Crews managed to extricate all but a few cars and trucks by Sunday afternoon. But the highway remains closed from the town of Tehachapi east to Mojave because several stretches of pavement remain buried under several feet of mud.

Caltrans says it could reopen the highway later this week.