canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Torrente delle Cento Acque

Torrente delle Cento Acque is the main stream in western side of Monte Cocuzzo. Despite its name stream may get dry in summer, because Monte Cocuzzo is a karst mountain. The abundant groundwater of Cocuzzo emerge in the lower part of Cento Acque valley, and from that point the Cento Acque is called Fiume di Mare, because it ends into the sea in a few kilometers.

The long and tiring descent of Cento Acque begins in the jungles of Monte Cocuzzo and develops in a valley featuring long walks and a few sporadic narrows with some cascades.

I remember ...

At last we arrived at stream's bed. We had spent the last hour in a typical calabrian jungle, luxuriant, dense, spiny, almost impracticable. The day was hot and humidity was high, so we sweated a lot. The caresses of thorns had left their memories on the shirt and on the skin, but finally we were on the shore, and the beloved sound of water jumping between the rocks was making us figure the deserved refreshing swims in the pools and showers under waterfalls.

In a few hundred meters we arrived at the beginning of canyon, marked by a majestic chaos of boulders. But there ... water disappeared under gravel and boulders. It will spring again after the chaos, I thought. But no, it didn't reappear: canyon had got definitively dry.
I could not believe it: I had done a reconnaissance 2 years before, in the same period (august), and the flow-rate was the one you can see in photos 8 and 9.

The bath in the pools and the shower under the falls remained a mirage that pushed us forward, in the only possible direction, while we continued to lose liters of sweat.

Foto e video by Michele Angileri e Andrea Pucci

Photographs in this website show ultralight ropes (6 mm ropes made of high tenacity fibers). Read multimedia book Ultralight ropes canyoning technique to learn how to use them.

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