There have been a number of notable landslides along the South Fork trail between Rainbow and South Fork camps in the past. About 1991 or 2 I was hiking along with a buddy talking over my shoulder, and luckily looked back ahead just in time to notice that the trail abruptly disappeared a few feet in front of me leaving a sheer drop of about 50 feet. A big chunck of the steep west canyon wall had given way and taken out about a 100' stretch of the trail. Someone hiking it at night without a light would have certainly come to grief.
But the epic slide in that area happened in 1995 or 96, when a huge shoulder of Maverick Ridge (which divides the forks of the Big Sur) slipped out and slid down into the canyon, blocking the river and creating a sizeable lake that still exists in part today. This slide was pretty massive and, along its backwaters, took out several hundred yards of trail.
