cookieless, no-ads, no threats canyon exploring with Michele Angileri Balzo 45
At the end of Salto valley, a few kilometers from town of Rieti, there is an unusual canyoning place. The peculiar feature is pudding-rock in huge compact layers, giving landscape peculiar shapes and colors. Moreover pudding is also tender for water, so every little stream can dig a canyon. That's why we find a very high concentration of canyons here! Balzo 45 is a little stream that goes down the steep woody left side of Salto valley. After some avoidable waterfalls, it comes to the edge of a rock wall, where it cuts a short sequence of non-avoidable falls, usually dry.
  I remember ...It was cold. It did't rain since many days, so the stream had to be dry. My friend Ezio (nickname of Orazio), a brave
caver, had no gear for water, might never be in a canyon before ... The right thing to do was exploring an easy dry canyon.
That stream looked perfect to the purpose.
A couple of months later I was there again with Gaetano, in June. Very few water this time, disappearing soon as going down. Stream revealed less interesting than I expected: cascades in first part were all bypassable or downclimbable, and there were no narrows! Only at the end stream gave us some thrill: a sequence of 3-4 dry cascades, the last of which was higher than we expected ... Photos by Michele Angileri and Andrea Pucci Copyright © 2002- Michele Angileri. All rights reserved. |
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