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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.

Name Balzo 45
Area Lazio, Balzi di Grotti
Nearest village Grotti (Rieti)
Elevation loss 140 m
Length 200 m
Highest cascade 42 m
Rock Conglomerate
Rating2
Shuttle No
Explored by Balzo 45: Michele Angileri, Gaetano Peluso; june 1997

 

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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.
But as we got ar canyon's startpoint we noticed there was some flow and even some pools! Impossible not to get wet. So I thought to change our goal and go exploring another stream, less interesting, surely dry.
I called it Balzo 30. I have had no intention to go there. That day our goal was the stream I would have called Balzo 45.

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.