A car crushed by a boulder twice its size

We decided to go ahead on foot. It was a clear, calm day. Birds sang, and the forested hillsides were lush and green. In other circumstances this would have been a place of great peace and beauty. But no sooner had we set out than stones rattled down a scree slope behind us in warning.

One landslide had created a temporary dam, with the fast-flowing river backed up behind it. It was no more than twenty or thirty feet high, but it was easy to understand the far larger obstacles that have been formed further to the north, and the danger they pose.

This small dam is dwarfed by much bigger ones to the north

As we continued, the state of the road grew worse. We passed places where chunks as big as skyscrapers had fallen from the tops of mountains and crashed down the vertical slopes and into the narrow gorge, bringing rocks the size of houses with them. Anywhere they fell these would have rubbed the road out like a pencil line, and a man caught beneath them would have had no more chance than an insect.

We reached a lay-by, formerly a scenic view-point, where another vehicle had been battered by rocks. With space to pass, and keen to push on a little further, we called our car to come forward.

At the end of the mountain pass we came to an area of habitation. Most of the roadside buildings had been destroyed – more by falling rocks than by the earthquake itself, it seemed. We passed a mountain holiday resort, now deserted. Eventually, at Hongkou Village, our reporters' credentials ran out, and grim-faced soldiers asked us to turn back.

A peasant's basket cast away by the roadside