andrewg > Hanging out at the Routeburn Shelter, staying out of the endless rain and waiting for the bus to pick us up.
andrewg > The Routeburn Shelter was our ending point, and a welcome shelter from the rain.  Revel and Alina are repacking their gear.
andrewg > Andrew at the end of a very wet day of hiking!  Because I had packed according to the Cindy Plan (put your things inside garbage bags when you put them in the pack), the garbage bag over my pack wasn't strictly necessary, but I wanted to keep the pack itself dry.  My rainpants were a little too long; you can see that they unrolled a bit by the time I came off the trail.
andrewg > Another view of the valley.
andrewg > A little panorama of the valley cut by the Route Burn.
andrewg > A swingbridge across a chasm.  Anchored at both ends, this is just wide enough for one person.  It's called a swingbridge because it does!  There's no reinforcement to prevent swaying, so the whole thing starts to swing (quite a lot) from side to side as you walk.  I found that I could crank up or down the amount of swinging by timing my steps.
andrewg > Another view of the valley from the Big Slip.
andrewg > A view from the Big Slip of the valley below.
andrewg > The Big Slip.  When you add too much rain to a densely-forested mountain, you get a slip.  The trees lose root and start to crash down, picking up more trees in a chain reaction.  When a huge storm hit the area in January 1994, this whole mountainside slid into the valley below.  It's already regrowing.  Walking along the Big Slip is dangerous, particularly when it's wet, because the ground is still unstable, due to the loss of the tree's roots.
Hanging out at the Routeburn Shelter, staying out of the endless rain and waiting for the bus to pick us up.
andrewg > Hanging out at the Routeburn Shelter, staying out of the endless rain and waiting for the bus to pick us up.
Hanging out at the Routeburn Shelter, staying out of the endless rain and waiting for the bus to pick us up.
See photo in gallery

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