Hikers Narrowly Avoid Being Crushed by Landslide

This is the moment a trickle of stones on an Andes mountain trek turned into a huge landslide leaving hikers running for their lives.

Julian Insarralde heads up a mountain trekking team who guide visitors around the famous range on the Argentina/Chile border.

However, in this shocking footage he captured on a three-day trek, explorers were forced to scramble to safety when tons of rocks tumbled down the mountain side.

The video begins by showing climbers leaping over a rock-slide of around three-foot, giving each other a helping hand to jump over it. The mood at this point is relatively calm, with laughing heard as the hikers appear to be pleased to see the flow.

However the width of the slide continues to widen, thus making it more of a challenge for the group to step onto safety. Then comes the warning sign from one of the group perched at the top of a raised platform, and what follows is terrifying.  As people begin to scream and shout, it's not apparent at this point what is about to happen. But in a matter of seconds a gigantic flow of rocks speeding down the side of the mountain at ferocious speeds shows just what the warning was about.

Thankfully it appears that all members of the hiking group managed to avoid getting caught in the path of the landslide, that could easily have resulted in death.